Andy Griffith Show: TVLand
by Thor2000
Summary: The television universe has collapsed in on Mayberry and now every classic TV series from the last fifty years exists alongside Sheriff Taylor and Barney in Mayberry in the present day without any knowledge of what's happening to them.
1. Chapter 1

Down Interstate 77 from out of Virginia and on to Highway 52 toward Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the scenery became rustic and simple. Farms dotted and surrounded by acres of untamed woodlands flashed by from roadside through one's car windows. As motorists drove toward Mayberry, they started to realized they were in a special place in the country barely touched by the invasion of the world beyond it. A trio of young men carried fishing poles down toward the fishing hole by following the creek that ran under the highway. A farmer quickly hiding his jug of illegal mountain whiskey waved from a tractor to the motorists driving by his property. On the front porch of one house, three gossiping ladies waved hello as well to the strangers entering the city limits. Eventually more houses started popping up as Highway 52 became Main Street in town, but those who lived here in town called it Maple Street. The mayor's house was on the right just down the block from pretty Nurse Peggy and another block over was Mrs. Mendlebright's Boarding House. The motherly old matriarch was being courted by another gentleman. At the town square, strangers in town could turn east out of town or west and left again past the courthouse. Sheriff Andy Taylor was coming from Floyd's barbershop again and scratching at his tiny hairs escaping down his back. He waved across the street to Howard Sprague and Sam Jones and then noticed people he didn't know admiring the display in Walker's Drugstore. The traffic was picking up a little as Howard and Sam continued for the Town Hall. Still brushing the thick auburn mop on his head, Andy noticed it wasn't quite so bushy after Floyd had clipped it. Briefly passing his hand over a front pillar of the courthouse, Andy thought he noticed something different. The Bluebird Diner off the square seemed to have changed hands. It was now calling itself Monk's Diner. He wondered about it a second and the gawky mop-topped stranger entering the place and then passed it out of his mind. Things changed around here, but it seemed he was just in there yesterday and he had heard nothing about it going to be sold.

Pressing on, Andy opened the door of the courthouse and swung it shut as he stepped through. He motioned for his desk and then realized that some things never changed. Just out of eyesight, his deputy was locked in the cell and using the broom to reach the keys left on the short wall separating the cells from the rest of the room. He grimaced a bit amused, rubbed his chin chuckling under breath and strided over the the beleaguered and embarrassed lawman in the cell.

"I locked myself in." Deputy Barney Fife stated the obvious.

"Looks like it..." Andy continued chuckling. There was a lot of humor in this incident, but he wasn't about to pick at Barney this time. He took the keys and unlocked the cell door for him. Accidents happened of course.

"Did you fix the stop sign over on Elm Street? It fell off again." Andy continued and hung the keys on the hook.

"It's on my list." Barney continued sweeping from the cells.

"Well," Andy turned to his desk as the phone rang. "Do me a favor and take it off your list." He turned to pick up the old bell and handle phone and instead noticed a black modern rotary phone on his desk. He looked at it with surprise and looked back to Barney.

"When we get the new phone?"

"I didn't notice." Barney answered as Andy answered the phone.

"Sheriff's office." Andy replied picking up the phone.

"Hello, sheriff..." It was a woman calling the courthouse. "My name is Gladys Kravitz and I think you ought to check out the Stephens House right now. There's some very strange things going on over there!"

"Well," Andy thought he knew everyone in town, but he sure didn't recall anyone named Kravitz. "What kind of strange things?"

"People vanishing and reappearing, things moving through the air..." She argued briefly with someone named Abner in the background. "Look, I pay taxes and I think you ought to know what's going on over there." Her voice turned very crass and snide as if she had a bone to pick with these certain neighbors.

"We'll get right on it, ma'am." Andy promised. "What's the address?"

"I live at 1163 Morning Glory Circle. Maybe you can just get to the bottom of what's going over there!"

"Yes, ma'am, I'll try to get on it." Andy rolled his eyes at this odd request. Barney had come over and stood over the desk with his hands on his belt. He picked up the address and wondered about it. Consciously, he had never heard of that road before, but unconsciously, it sounded familiar. Wasn't that the road that crossed Maple Drive eight houses down from Andy's house? He thought that was Elm Street, but right now, it seemed his memories were stirring up with thoughts and memories being updated against each other.

"Morning Glory..." Barney thought a second. "Ain't no such road in Mayberry..."

"I know..." Andy rose from the desk to check it out.

"Then where are we going?" Barney was a few steps behind as if he knew what was going on, but instead of acting rationally, Andy found himself acting instinctively as if he just happened to recall where the street was. With Barney getting into the patrol car with him, he drove around and between Walker's Drugstore and the Post Office and past the Old Oak Tree in the Town Square and down Maple street toward his house. His son, Opie Taylor, waved to him excitedly from the front yard of his house as he drove by. Instead of stopping, Andy stayed in sheriff mode and drove and down to where Maple and Elm intersected and looked to the street signs. It looked as though Elm had been renamed as Morning Glory Circle, but that was impossible. If it had, he was sure the mayor and city council would have talked and discussed it. He would have known about it. Turning left, he continued past houses and structures he knew he'd never seen before but again seemed oddly familiar. He knew he'd never been here before, but something about these strange houses poked through his memories as if they were being altered by forces he didn't understand.

Barney stepped out on to the street from the passenger side of the car first. He and Andy exchanged a look and tried to refamiliarize themselves with this strange new part of Mayberry and started to cross the street for what was 1163 Morning Glory Circle. It was a nice one story home with a perfect green yard and square manicured bushes. The bluish-gray clapboard house had a very suburban look and feel to it unlike the other houses in this small Southern town.

The sound of a motorcycle coming down the street attracted Barney's attention. He just happened to glance up, but as he saw the motorcyclist, he started reaching for his gun. It looked a a young greaser in a leather jacket from an old Fifties film he had seen with Thelma Lou. The leather-jacket clad young man just drove by along his way, but Barney knew with that type came trouble in the form of hoods and street gangs. Eager to arrest the leather clad motorcyclist, he struggled to pull out his gun, but Andy put his hand on it and stopped him.

"Barney..." Andy chided him. "He's probably just passing through. If we arrest everyone who was a little different, we'd be arresting just bout everyone."

"Oh yeah..." Barney was sometimes overeager in his police duties. "Well, they never did get all of Dillinger's men!" Andy just humored Barney for the minute and pressed his finger to the doorbell. A buzzing noise sounded within and a short, slightly over weight lady appeared to the door. Her face was round with two cherubic brown eyes and her dark brown hair was styled short. She turned up a suspicious eye to Andy and Barney and held on to the door to preserve her privacy.

"Sheriff Taylor?"

"Yes, ma'am..." Andy started. "You said you was being bothered."

"Not just bothered, but I'm afraid for my life... From her!" She pointed across the street. "Ever since Samantha Stephens moved into the neighborhood, this street has not been safe. Houses and people appear and disappear, objects fly through the air, strange things occur... almost as if by... magic."

Andy and Barney slowly gave each other a look as they realized maybe this Mrs. Kravitz was completely all there herself. Her husband had poked up his look for his newspaper on the sofa and rolled his eyes in a very beleaguered and over-wrought demeanor. He had lived through these crazy accusations on the neighbors several times, and Mrs. Stephens got the worst of it. His sigh and eye roll spoke volumes to a experienced lawman like Andy.

"Uh-huh..." Andy exhaled obviously them looked to his deputy. "Barney, why don't you go have a talk with Mrs. Stephens across the street while I get a statement from Mrs. Kravitz."

"Right, sheriff..." Barney saluted and turned away. Gladys Kravitz was just happy to have someone listening to her for a change instead of her husband, Abner, who often poured her nerve medicine down her throat to try killing her persistent hallucinations. Whether or not they were hallucinations was now for Barney to decide. Looking for more Fifties motorcycle-riding hoods in the street, he crossed over to the two-story wood frame house and strided up across the driveway behind a blue convertible and up the walkway. Even with the sun in his face, he panned over the yard and looked over it to admire it then turned with a cocksure step to the front porch and rang the bell. A melodious tune played and a vacuum cleaner turned off inside the resident. Barney looked briefly back to this perfect yard and glanced up to a new church on the corner across from the street. The sign outside it read United Methodist Church. He knew there was one here in Mayberry, but he thought it was on the other side of town. Down the street from it was a large bus parked in the driveway of another home. Who owned a bus painted like that?

"Yes?" Samantha Stephens appeared at the door in the form a beautiful woman and swept Barney off his feet. She was nothing like what he was expecting. She had long blonde hair swept back from her face and her blue eyes had a regal mystical presence to them as if she could see more than just objects and people before her. Dressed in a black sweater and violet Capri pants, her shapely figure turned on the romantic in Barney Fife and he flashed on his grin to try charming her in return.

"Well, hello there..." He beamed neighborly. "You must be new to Mayberry. May I just say welcome to our little town."

"I've been living here or seven years." Samantha answered. "But thank you very much and... excuse me, what's a mayberry?"

"Mayberry, the town we're in..." Barney started then noticed the imposing petite red-haired woman who appeared from no where behind Samantha. She hadn't walked up or crossed the room, she had just popped in to the room where no one had been before. Garbed in a long green and blue gown, the woman had spectral red hair designed and adorned over her head as if she was more at home in another century.

"Where did you come from?" Barney reacted spooked.

"The source of the Nile." She gestured and the door slammed shut on Deputy Barney Fife. Samantha Stephens groaned at the spectacle of her mother using her witchcraft before mortals. Well versed in the practice of concealing and explaining away her own mystical powers, Samantha turned to her mother upset and frustrated.

"Mother! What are you doing?"

"What am I doing?" Endora rose her voice to her adult child. "What are you doing? Did you think moving your house to this tiny little town would keep me from finding you? What were you thinking?"

"Mother," Samantha folded her arms before her modest bust size. "What are you talking about?'

"You don't know?" Endora looked at her daughter and realized she really wasn't kidding. She really didn't know. "Samantha, your house is now located in a tiny little town called Mayberry, North Carolina and it's not the only one..." She dramatically wandered out into the living room. "Did I say tiny little town? Not for long... There are dozens of houses and businesses popping in all over the place around here from over time and space, and because of it, reality and the past is being altered and the memories of these mortals with it. Now, as witches we are immune, but for Durwood..." Endora always called Samantha's husband by a condescending name. "... and other mortals, they won't know the difference."

"Mother, are you making this up?"

"Well, see for yourself..." Endora materialized the local newspaper and handed it to Samantha. It looked normal, but instead of the Westport News, it was the Mayberry Gazette. An article described how the wealthy Collins Family had donated money to the Mayberry Library and how the city was going to tear down the old Rose Red Mansion outside of town. Bandleader Ricky Ricardo's wife was in the news for terrorizing the park while trying to get an autograph from actress Ginger Grant. Mel's Diner on the other side of town was running a raffle to drum up business. Captain Jim Brass was asking the locals for information in the murder of one Laura Palmer.

"How about Darren?" Samantha was worried her husband was still in New York City and return to Westport looking for the house.

"McMann and Tate also got moved with several other businesses into nearby Raleigh." Endora stopped and turned around to Samantha. "I don't know what's going on round here, but I think things are going to get very interesting around here.


	2. Chapter 2

PART TWO

"All right, you... get in there." Barney waved his gun in to the direction of the courthouse interior as he lead the way. Andy looked up from his desk and noticed his wiry deputy bringing into custody a young man in a leather jacket, white t-shirt and blue jeans. His wrists handcuffed before him, the former hood wasn't in a very combative mood at the moment. The epitome of cool temper and infinite patience, he just strolled forward silently biding his time knowing full well not to make undue waves in this off beat predicament. Standing before Sheriff Taylor, he looked up with a warning gaze to Deputy Fife who noticed that glare and stepped away unaware of what his prisoner was capable of.

"I got him dead to rights, Ange..." Barney now played bailiff as he read the fine from his ticket book. "I was driving by that there new garage on the other side of town and caught him emptying the cash register. I got him dead to rights."

"I own the place." The former hood answered.

"Likely story..." Barney smirked sure of himself and grinned proud of himself. He started reading his report out loud for the record. "Name, Arthur Fonzarelli, age..."

"Fonzie."

"Beg your pardon..." Andy lifted his head up to the accused.

"Fonzie..." Arthur Fonzarelli answered. "I prefer to be called The Fonz, but I'll accept Fonzie."

"All right, Mr. Fonzie..." Andy was fully willing to call the young man anything to let him know he'd be treated respectfully. Instead, he received a tone of disbelief from the young man that made him realize that he was not used to authority.

"Whoa..." The Fonz was not up to these squares.

Andy continued. "You just have to understand that when we see a stranger in town dipping his hand into the till here in Mayberry, that we're going to be a little..."

"What's a Mayberry?" Fonzie asked.

"What's a Mayberry? Oh brother..." That question provoked a response of disbelief in Barney. "Come on you, get in that cell over there!" He started waving his gun to the Fonz to enter one of the holding cells along the side wall against Floyd's Barbershop next door. With his prisoner in the cell, he clanged the door shut on him and turned around smugly confident that he had captured a wanted felon. After all, from just looking at him, Barney could tell that the Fonz belonged to a gang and that by locking him up, he sent a warning to those gang members not to come to Mayberry.

"Now, Barney..." Sheriff Andy Taylor preferred to see those cells empty. "He could be telling the truth, you know."

"The truth?" Barney strolled back to the desk and stood by the side of it. "Dressed like that?" He turned back to his prisoner. "Can you prove that you work there?"

Almost by answer, the courthouse doors opened up and three young men entered wearing college letter jackets. The young man in the lead had red hair and an All-American look that belonged in the Fifties. One of his friends had dark hair and sported an identical college letter jacket while the other young man had brighter red hair than the first and was chewing bubble gum. Atop his head was a small cap and across his black t-shirt in faded brown letters were the words, "Sit on it."

"Sheriff," The first young man started speaking. "You just arrested one Arthur Fonzarelli under false pretenses."

"Yeah." His buddies chorused together supporting him.

"Fonzie wasn't robbing the garage." The young man continued. "He owns it and we think you ought to let him go, otherwise we'll get a petition together and take it straight to the mayor if necessary to get him out."

"Yeah." His buddies chorused again.

"You can't just arrest people by jumping to conclusions." The red-haired young man was obviously part of theDebating Team."I mean after all, isn't this America. Our country was built and based on the prerequisite of freedom to all and a fair trial. We ask... no, we demand you let our best friend, the Fonz, out of your jail."

"Yeah." His buddies comedically answered one more time, but by this time, their red haired leader was trying to get them to hold back on their participation. Andy Taylor just looked to Barney impressed by the boys' support of their friend and role model.

"Sound good enough to you, Barney." Andy looked to Barney and then back to the boys. "Young man, I just want to say that..." He paused noticing something eerily familiar about the red-haired college student before him. "Excuse me, you look a little familiar. Have we met before?"

"Richie Cunningham, sir." The young man introduced himself with a sort of Howdy Doody grin. "My father owns the hardware store and my mother's a member of the PTA." Richie grinned satisfied that he'd made his point. Andy made a short nod to his head and turned his head to Barney.

"Barney, let Mr. Fonzarelli out of the cell." He replied.

"But Andy..."

"Let Mr. Fonzarelli out of the cell." Andy repeated again with his voice just a bit more tense.

"Ange..."

"Let him out of the cell!" Andy finally lost his temper as Barney quivered strong in his determination yet fumbled with the cell doors in his hands. Eyes bulging, his ego a bit squashed and his body quaking from the humiliation, he rattled the keys together and slid one with a rushed and frustrated aggravation into the keyhole while trying to turn it at the same time. The key wouldn't budge and the lock resisted turning as he fought to get the door unlocked to satisfy Andy.

"What's wrong with this key?" Barney pulled the key out to see if he had the wrong one, but the Fonz just stamped his foot hard to the cement floor as the lock popped back and the door swung open. Barney did a double-take at that feat of magical expertise and looked to Andy out of bewilderment. Richie Cunningham and his college comrades meanwhile laughed together in jovial friendship quite used to Fonzie's tricks. Andy looked up curiously as the Fonz came out of the cell and casually returned Barney's handcuffs to him.

"It's a gift." The former hood turned mechanic strolled forward confidently and joined his friends turning out. The one named Ralph Malph stepped back to let the Fonz move ahead of him as the dark-haired one named Warren Webber took his place in the back of the line. Nick-named Potsie by his friends, he beamed his naive grin to the sheriff and deputy and marched out ready to face the world. Behind him, Deputy Barney Fife scuffed his feet a bit crestfallen back over to his best friend and confidant for guidance.

"Andy, I had him dead to rights..."

"I know, Barney..." Andy completely understood. "But if we arrest everyone for looking a bit suspicious, we'd end up arresting half the..." One of the courthouse windows was shattered by a rock that sailed past Barney and landed in the gun rack behind him.

"You know who's back in town, don't you!" Barney's spirits jumped hesitantly ready and eager to tangle with that same old familiar rock-throwing mountain man with a chip on his shoulder. Andy started grinding his teeth already as he rose, walked around the desk and toward the front doors.

"Dang you, Ernest T. Bass!" Andy was fuming already. "I told you that if you ever throw another rock, I was going to..." Andy and Barney stopped on the front stoop of the courthouse and looked through the traffic. Between the psychedelic van branded the Mystery Machine and the black Knight Industries Two Thousand was a young boy with spiked hair of eight years in age wearing blue shorts, worn sneakers and an orange t-shirt. He grinned mischievously while carrying a slingshot in his hand.

"Don't have a cow, man."


	3. Chapter 3

PART THREE

Within less than a month, Mayberry had doubled and then tripled in size. Where farms once rested were now neighborhoods of people and perfect green yards. Doctor Jason Seaver talked over his fence to his neighbor Mike Brady about an addition to his house. Tim Taylor heard about the job and rushed over to lend his expertise. Helen Crump at the school shared her lunch alongside teachers Jaime Sommars and Roy Hinkley to listen to his stories of once being on a deserted island. Lady pharmacist Ellie Walker filled out a prescription from Doctor Benjamin Franklin Pierce to one hypochondriac named Felix Unger. Charlie Foley had moved his shop to a larger more adequate warehouse to help serve the town. In the back of it, Butcher Sam Franklin was confused by mechanic Gomer Pyle for a certain Marine drill sergeant named Sergeant Ed Hacker. Traffic was getting thicker and the neighborhoods even more confusing as street signs renamed themselves and twisted around themselves. Where Maple once turned into the highway was a new street called Clinton running the perimeter around Mayberry and rejoining itself near a restraunt called Arnold's Drive-In where the theme was the Fifties and waitresses delivered orders in rolling skates. After driving by the place, Andy drove past the Curious Goods Antique Store and started heading back to the courthouse. Back onto Clinton, the rows of houses started turning older and even more run down. At the end of the street where the Rimshaw house once stood was the oldest creepiest place of them all with gnarled trees, tall weeds in the yard, a wall topped in iron wrought spikes ands a strange couple yelling down into an open manhole.

"Herman, did you get Spot yet?" The older gentleman resembled a fat Jack the Ripper in a cape. His daughter resembled a ghoulish Yvonne De Carlo from an old zombie flick.

"Not yet, Grandpa," A voice called out from the hole in the street. "He doesn't want to come. Now, Spot..." A loud roaring sound poured from the hole. It was a sound not heard from the Mesozoic Age and was accompanied by a tinge of flames. It was near this spectacle that Andy and Barney stopped their patrol car. Young Beaver Cleaver and his friend Larry Mondello stopped to watch for a second and Barney shooed them off to school.

"Howdy," Andy stepped out of the patrol car speaking jovially to the grandfather and his daughter with his homespun Southern hospitality. "Anything I can do to help you?"

"No problem, commodore, we've gone through this several times." Grandpa beamed ear to ear with a full grin of pallor.

"Our family pet always hides in the sewer when my son goes to school." Lily Munster added.

"Really," Barney looked over the top of the hole trying to see something. "What kind of pet? Dog? Cat?" There was another loud roaring and Barney jumped back eyes bulging, his neck and head stretched out and clutching and struggling with his gun in his holster. Even Andy reacted with alarm at the noise then tried to calm Barney.

"Now, come on, Spot," Herman Munster's voice came out of the sewer. "You're going to make me late for the parlor!"

"Uh, ma'am," Andy rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. "Are you sure you don't want me to get someone from water works out here to help you? They're very good with getting out all sorts of pets whether they be dog, cat,..."

"Alligator." Barney added half-serious under his breath.

"I'd hate to get them out here for nothing." Lily Munster pulled her cape of coffin lining closer. "My husband will have Spot out in a minute."

Andy nodded partially and half-interestedly peered down into the open manhole. He didn't really want to see anything. He just nodded his head and turned back to the patrol car. Barney wasn't ready to leave. He was very suspicious of these people, but then it might of been the fact they looked as if they'd be at home in Orville Munroe's Television Repair and Funeral Home. As he started to get back into the passenger side of the car, another stranger driving a worn white pick-up stopped alongside the patrol car and looked to Andy.

"Is there a problem, officer?" Willie Loomis looked to him with Victoria Winters, the new Collins governess seated by him in the cab of the pick-up.

"Not a problem, sir..." Andy slipped into the patrol car and Willie started on his way. Young Victoria with her porcelain and fragile features looked back behind them as the patrol car continued on its way. She was going to be the governess to children of Collinwood and she was looking forward to the adventure of living in this small town.

"Was that the Sheriff Patterson you told me about?" She asked.

"No, that was..." Willie reacted confused and beleaguered a minute. "I forget who that was." He drove on to return to Collinwood over the cliffs. Along the way, he tuned from Clinton Drive on to Morning Glory Circle. The route took him past Clinton Elementary School at the same time as Beaver Cleaver arrived with Larry Mondello. Teacher Beth Landers hurried ahead to get to the classroom ahead of the third and fifth graders in her way as well as the random first grader. As Beaver crowded through this school, Eddie Munster turned to meet him at their lockers outside the room of a teacher named Mrs. Edna Krabappel.

"Hey, Beav," Eddie perked his face. "Want to come to my house after school? My grandpa's going to show me how to get blood from a turnip."

"I can't," Beaver groused. "My mom's taking me clothes shopping."

"Clothes shopping." Ben Seaver grinned amused at Beaver's life. "You need to talk to Bart. He can get you out of anything! He helped Richie Petrie get out of piano lessons."

"He's right, Beav." Larry spoke up. "Bart got me out of going to my grandma."

"Gosh," Beaver started wondering about this Bart Simpson kid. He was one grade below them and he already had a reputation. "I don't know."

"How about Corey Baxter?" Ben thought of the new black kid whose father ran the local Chill Grill. "He's only one grade above us and he's got a way with parents."

"I dunno." Beaver was still very apprehensive. He had to think of all the other times he'd been in trouble because of their advice. Because of them he had got meet Paramedic John Gage, police officer Ponch Poncharello, detective Joe Friday and a bounty hunter named Colt Seaver. As he commiserated his role in this peer pressure, Cindy Brady strolled by grinning with her childhood crush on the young brother of Wally Cleaver.

The school bell rang and Beaver found his reprieve. Dashing with Eddie, Larry and Ben into Mrs. Landers room, he took his seat in front of Tabitha Stephens while Larry and Ben took opposite seats around Ricky Ricardo Jr. As Mrs. Landers checked the role, she noticed something odd. She usually had twenty-seven kids in her class, but now she had thirty-one. Where did the extra four come from? She looked up beyond Rudy Huxtable and noticed four new students.

"Are you four new here?"

"Yes, ma'am" The slightly chubby one in the beanie cap replied. The other students looked back to see these new kids. Besides the chubby boy with the cap, there was a skinny kid with his hair greased back to an odd point, an adorable brunette pixie with cherubic brown eyes and yet another African American boy close to Rudy in age. She looked over his huge mane of unbrushed hair.

"Are you ready to learn something?" Beth Landers grinned to see how eager they were.

"Otay!" The one with the hair grinned brightly as the class laughed out loud.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Bea Taylor had spent a bit longer shopping than she had wanted. She and Clara had only wanted to stop briefly at the New Market Mall to check it out and ended up getting in a fight with a shoe salesman named Al Bundy, encountering heiress London Tipton with her new best friend Jackie Burkhart and then lunch at a small dinner cafe with waitress Alice Hyatt and a housekeeper named Alice Nelson. They had only barely met, but it seemed as if they had known each other for years.

Back at the Taylor household, Bea started as per her daily routine of taking care of her nephew's Andy's home and watching over young Opie with the same motherly guidance with which she had raised Andy. Opie had tore through the house just minutes before with his friends. All of Opie's young friends ranging from Ben Seaver and Richie Petrie seemed to be good young men as was Bobby Brady, the young man from the family over on Clinton Street, but that Eddie Munster, was something else. He sort of always had a weird pale look to his face. Upon meeting him the first time, Bea had thought he was sick and tried to send him home to his mother, but Eddie just insisted he was alright and raced off with Opie and the others. And then there was the matter with his ears: they both came to points like something from another world. The boys loved the way Eddie could open bottles with his ears.

Continuing with her cooking and cleaning, Bea remised for a moment by the radio listening to her daytime radio program on WKRP out of Atlanta starring that charming Pamela Moran, a daytime talk hostess. She was much nicer than that loud and raucous DJ Mork McConnell claiming to be from the planet Ork for comedy effect. Between breaks in Pam's show, Freddy Fillmore was giving away free tickets to the Tropicana with Ricky Ricardo and later on, Ryan Seacrest continued with American Top Forty. Ryan then broke off as Fillmore came through with tragic news from the west coast of the country. Aunt Bea listened closely to the radio as the music stopped for the announcement.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Freddy's voice became solemn. "I've just been handed an announcement to let you know that Oceanic Airline Flight 815 from Melbourne to Los Angeles has just gone down somewhere in the South Pacific. The authorities are searching an area of a thousand miles where the plane went down, but they are not very optimistic about locating any survivors."

"Goodness." Bea made a mental note to pray for those good people and their families. She had done the same thing after the explosion in Oklahoma City and the events of September 11, 1999. She and Clara had even done all they could to gather relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina with the added support of the Mayberry PTA. She wasn't sure why she knew these events; she just did. A few days ago, she thought the calendar on the wall read 1965, but now when she looked at it, it read 2005. Maybe she should be distressed over the loss of forty years, but she wasn't. She had been born in 1947, but sometimes she thought she'd been born much earlier than that. She heard the front doors opening and looked out to Andy coming in to the house.

"Hello, Andy..." Bea came out to greet him. "How was your day?"

"Aunt Bea..." Andy rubbed his head distraught. "I think I'm losing it. This town is going crazy. Houses and streets popping up out of nowhere, farms vanishing and reappearing miles away, a female mayor I've never met, people calling me asking me for directions or the date, people I don't know coming by the courthouse... poor Sara quit the switchboard because she couldn't keep up with the calls now. I've got crazy ladies over on some street called Wisteria Lane, distant explosions from the Addams House, Candace Flynn screaming her brothers are building something, Brian Hackett describing flying saucers over the airfield, Mrs. Kravitz screaming about oddball neighbors in the Munster House and Barney trying to lock up everyone who looks strange. I've just about had it. Thank god, Barney hired that new deputy from across the county line. I need all the help I can get."

"New deputy?" Bea tried to calm him. "Is he any good?'

"I dunno..." Andy sat picking up the Mayberry Gazette. "Name's Enos Strate from up out of Hazzard County... Don't ask me where it is because I don't know, and I don't want to know."

"Well, Andy..." Bea dried a plate as she spoke with Andy. "We all get a little forgetful. I was just talking to Alice this morning..."

"Alice?"

"Alice Nelson, my friend. She's the housekeeper for the Brady's on the next block." Bea reminded Andy. "They live across the street from that Major Anthony Nelson."

"Well, what about her..." Andy grumbled lightly as he sat in his chair.

"Alice and I talked about there's a lot of places in town we both used to visit and have forgot about." Bea looked out to the front yard. "I mean, that Curious Goods antique store, I don't recall ever being in there, but Jack Marshak remembered me and asked how you were doing."

"Is that the one run by that Melinda Gordon?' Andy tried recalling faces too. "Barney's got a bit of a crush on her."

"No, this is the one back behind the Gateman Funeral home and next to Harry's Hardware Store that was once run by Lewis Vendredi... his niece and nephew took it over." Bea rattled off names and places she was becoming aware of. "I used to think Michelle was related to the Foster Furniture people. She's now dating Sean Finnerty."

"Finnerty." Andy recalled that name. "She's better off without him. That boy's just not to be trusted."

Opie started coming down the stairs ahead of Ben, Richie, Bobby and the Munster kid. Opie stopped near Andy's chair and Eddie just grinned that creepy smile that made his pointed ears bend out even more sharper.

"Paw, is it okay if I go out?" Opie asked. "We're going to catch up with Beaver and Larry at the toy store. Mr. Schultz is going to tell us more stories about Colonel Hogan from the war."

"I reckon." Andy replied. "But be home by six." With that permission, Opie and his friends from school hastened for the front porch where Zack and Cody Martin were just coming on to the front porch. The two boys were blonde twins who usually lived at the Tipton Hotel in Raleigh, but their father had them in Mayberry to go fishing.

"You guys ready?"

"Yeah." Richie cried out first. Eddie jumped off the porch first and Zack and Cody ran circles around Ben Seaver. Hearing the voices of Cody and Zack screaming and yelling, Andy cringed and looked out through the front windows of his house.

"Aunt Bea," Andy remorsed. "Why didn't you warn me the Martin boys were back? Last time they were in town, they nearly burned down the Rimshaw house!"


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Enos Strate was starting to like Mayberry. He was still close to Hazzard County, and he was making more money with out Boss Hogg taking his forty percent of his paycheck or docking what was left for smashed up patrol cars. Barney was sometimes a bit gung-ho in his duties, but he knew there was a worthy leader in that skinny deputy. Daisy Duke visited him quite often and since the Duke Farm was right on the Hazzard and Mayberry County line, Enos knew he could go visit his friends anytime he wished.

As part of his duties, Enos had to check on the security guard at the high school for a report on reported incorrigibles like Eddie Haskell, Parker Lewis and Matthew Burton. Somehow, the school had swollen from a mere two hundred and twelve kids to seven hundred and eighty-three. What was once a mere two story school was now a small school campus with external and interior classrooms and Harry Cleese was a fitting security guard. He was tall and built like actor Kevin Sorbo and had a surreal and awkward knowledge of mythology and ancient history, but when he wasn't sending kids back to school, he was staying on the four custodians, the Howard Brothers and Larry Fine. Curly was the most likeable of the four, but both Moe and Shemp had tempers. Larry was harmless, but he was always running off to play cards with the school groundskeepers, two former drifters named Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Every once a while, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello closed their diner early to get in that game, but then Moe would come around to crack some heads and get Larry back to work.

Today, the school was pounding with screams and yells reverberating from the pep rally in the school gymnasium. Cheerleaders screamed to the packed school to rally the school behind star school quarterback Greg Brady of the Mayberry Cougars as they went up against the Mount Pilot Muskrats. Greg's sister, Marcia Brady, was co-captain of the cheerleading squad, but she was constantly at odds with Libby Chessler, the other captain. Libby was always trying to use her reputation to corrupt the other girls while Marcia tried to incite the girls into doing what was best for Mayberry High School. The animosity between the two lead to many fights for Principal Grace Musso and Vice Principals Kevin DeWitt and Neal Hackett to have to arbitrate. The fighting between the captains lead to several bouts of confusion with the other girls. Jackie Burkhart always tried to be neutral, but Lilly Finnerty liked the fact that someone like Libby wanted her to hang around with her and Lizzie Loomis. Lizzie was the cousin of William Collins, the son of Barnabas and Angelique Collins at Collinwood. Cheerleader Buffy Summers was always on Marcia's side, but she didn't care much for Loomis. There was something unexplainable about Lizzie, William and Collinwood in general that bothered her, but she didn't know what it was. The other cheerleaders, Bridget Hennessey and Joanie Cunningham, generally supported Marcia, but Libby was constantly manipulating them to her own ends. From the bleachers, Bud Bundy, Matthew Burton and the foreign exchange student known only as Fez sported binoculars as they focused on the chests of the girls rather than their athletic talents.

"Excuse me, excuse me..." Seventh grader David "Gordo" Gordon forced through the sea of school spirit and teenage angst just to sit near his friends. He passed by Bridget's sister, Kerry Hennessey, sitting with Darlene Connor and Donna Pinciotti, Parker Lewis sitting and trying to get a date with Nicole Bradford and then around Nicole's look-alike, Dana Foster, the step-daughter of local contractor, Frank Lambert. "Hey guys," Gordo finally made it to Lizzie McGuire and Miranda Sanchez. Sure he was often teased by the other guys for hanging around two girls, but Gordy had had a long secret infatuation with Lizzie and he was hoping someday she would realize it. "Pointless isn't it - all this forced school gatherings. Like anyone's going to care in ten years what school beat what school in football and basketball."

"Gordo, you got cut from the basketball team." Lizzie looked up as a friend. "Give it a rest."

"Curse that Eddie Haskell." Gordo groused a bit. "I know he had something to do with the steel plates in my sneakers."

"Hey, Gordo..." Raven Baxter was coming down through the available spaces in the bleachers. The cheerleading had stopped and Vice-Principal Hackett was now giving announcements. Raven sat down in the space up above Lizzie and Miranda. "Did you get a date for the dance?"

"I was thinking about asking Keely Teslow..." Gordo answered. "But she's probably going with Phil Diffy again. Maybe I'll ask Carmen Lopez."

"Maybe you ought to ask Chels." Raven played matchmaker for her best friend Chelsea Daniels. "I know she'd prefer going with you over Jerry Steiner."

"Jerry's not bad..." Miranda was quick to point out. "He just comes off as weird because of that overcoat he wears with all the stuff in it."

"Raven," Lizzie spoke up. "Are you going to be trying out for American Idol when they come to North Carolina next month?"

"Girl, I'm going to be a big fashion designer to the stars..." Raven announced determinedly. "I don't sing, but have you noticed all the girls in chorus have stopped talking to each other. I think they are."

Raven was right. Lizzie, Gordo and Miranda stretched their heads out and noticed Kelly Clarkson was down front near Becky Connor and Lindsay Lohan was up far in a corner of the bleachers talking to Nicole Tieri. Kimberly Locke had once been friends with LaToya London and now the two were rows apart. Britney Spears was in a place for Bud Bundy to look up her skirts and Jessica Simpson was getting propositioned by Michael Kelso. The four girls had the best singing voices in the school, but with American Idol auditions coming as close they were to Mayberry, they were all hoping to be the next Jem, Madonna or Cyndi Lauper.

The school bell then rang and all the kids crowded together to catch their buses or respective rides. Christina Aguilera was nearly crushed in the stampede, but her close friend Britney saved her from being crushed. Even as they promised to eternally be close friends, Lizzie McGuire and Lindsay Lohan shot looks at each other under the bounds of an unspoken rivalry. Lindsay was soon rushing to catch up with Fez, and Kelly Bundy was off to lure Phil Diffy away from Keely Teslow. Matt Burton was ready to film that fight, but his soundman Bud Bundy would never make it. Bud would find his windpipe cut off by the big and beefy Larry Kubiac from the school football team. Larry was practically big enough to be the whole team. Stuffing Bud into his locker, Kubiac slammed the door on him in the interest of just holding on to his role as the school bull in the school hierarchy.

"Okay," Chachi Arcola strolled up unafraid. "Let him out of there."

Kubiac didn't answer. He grabbed the nephew of mechanic Arthur Fonzarelli and stuffed the skinny wimp into another locker. In the wake of Larry's absence, Theo Huxtable strolled over with his friend Cockroach trying to help.

"Do you guys need any help?"

"Get the security guard!" Bud and Chachi screamed together.

Out in front of the school, the buses started carry the kids home amongst the nineteen sub-divisions of Mayberry. Of the numerous diversity of kids, Jackie Burkhart looked at Jesse Montgomery and thought he looked or resembled her boyfriend, Michael Kelso, who was off pulling pranks on Steven Hyde and calling it "punked." Montgomery just looked to his buddy, Chester Greenberg, and asked him the same question they asked each other every day at dismissal.

"Where's my car, dude?"

"Dude, where's your car?"

"This isn't funny!" Jesse's voice rose. "Where's my car, dude!"


	6. Chapter 6

On his way to the mayor's office, Sheriff Taylor crossed pass Walker's Drugstore and Monk's Diner and took the time to say hello to both Elaine Benes going into the diner and Drew Carey coming out. A psychedelic van crossed at the corner with Norville "Shaggy" Rogers at the wheel and his huge Great Dane hanging out the passenger side window as they drove for lunch at the Chill Grill restraunt. At one time, Andy recalled he could cross the streets of Mayberry quite easily, but these days the traffic was quite busier than usual. With the cars were a lot more people and for the first time, Andy had to search his confusing memories to remind himself of who was who. As Andy turned to the city hall, he grinned to the ladies traveling down toward him. Buffy Wilson and Hildegarde Desmond were two of the most masculine looking ladies Andy had ever seen. Tenants at the local Susan B. Anthony Hotel, they looked like Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari in drag!

As Andy vanished into the city hall, there was a crash of the dumpster and the stirring of human figures. The kid in the striped shirt looked to his time traveling companion in the leather vest and open shirt.

"Bogg, you aimed for the dumpster!"

"Jeffrey, how do I aim for a dumpster!"

The mayor had called for Andy and the town council to discuss the town budget. Recently elected, Donna Garland had been a native of Marlowe, California before moving to town with her daughter, Evie Garland, a young blonde beauty who had secretive talents in common with her new best friend Sabrina Spellman. Back home, Donna had been a school principal and a mayor of Marlowe after Kyle Applegate, a former actor whose main glory was the TV superhero called Mosquito Man. Upon coming to town, Donna had been backed as mayor by Ellie Walker, Thelma Lou Blair and even the rarely seen Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard. Mayberry had never had a female mayor and now that she had the position, everyone liked her, except for Al Bundy, Jefferson Darcy, Jim Belushi, Tim Taylor and the rest of the No Ma'am members.

Andy himself had no problem with Donna Garland as mayor. As he told Nurse Peggy Macmillan, maybe Mayberry needed a mayor with a female touch. Ascending the staircase to the mayor's office in city hall, he crossed paths with the town clerk, a clean and eternally sober fellow named Howard Sprague who must have been born twenty years too late. His rigid routines were more fit for a man born in the 1940s.

"Hey, Howard," Andy looked at the dapperly dressed town clerk "I noticed you're fixing up your house. You getting ready to sell it?"

"Oh, no Andy, nothing of the sort..." Howard's restrained grin started poking up under that milquetoast mustache. "Since mother got married, I'm getting it fixed up like a real bachelor's pad and I got those Monster House guys from the Discovery Channel to do it." He nodded his head with a glint of excitement in his eyes excitedly trying to be different. "They're fixing it up like a South Pacific getaway."

"Oh..." Andy grinned trying to be impressed. "I see..." Andy didn't say another thing. Barney stepped from Mayor Garland's office to guide them inside the office. Barney stepped aside for Howard to sit down and join the perspective members of the town council. Dick Loudon, the owner of the Stratford was part of the town council, as was longtime resident, Floyd Lawson, the town barber. Farmer Sam Jones was not only a councilman, but the town treasurer, but the one man who had done more for Mayberry was councilman Oliver Wendell Douglas, a former Manhattan lawyer. Having given up the expensive life for farming, Douglas had donated the money to update the local telephone service, negotiated with Jed Clampett, Bobby Ewing, Blake Carrington and Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard for the money to build nearby Tom Nevers Field and had even helped to back Donna Garland as mayor over previous Mayor Roy Stoner.

"Gentleman," Donna started her civil duty. "I don't know if you know it, but according to records, Mayberry has jumped from a population of one thousand, one hundred and seventy three to..." She rechecked a recent paper done from a informal city poll. "Fifty thousand, eight hundred and thirty-seven. That's an increase of practically five hundred percent and somehow, someway the county is missing taxes going back seventy years. It's almost as if all these people appeared homes and jobs intact over a few days. The town is suddenly... broke. How did Stoner run this town on a small town budget?"

"Maybe he was embezzling the money?" Loudon suggested. Floyd started to say something and then drew silent.

"He couldn't have." Sam spoke up. "I've been treasurer since Mayor Pike. I'd have known if money was vanishing. I mean, this isn't Hazzard County with one man running everything. The town records are accurate and infallible."

"I ain't going to lose Enos, will I?" Andy asked. "I need him and maybe another. Barney and I are suddenly busy as beavers in a rainstorm."

"I'm busy too." Floyd added. "I've got this new barber in my shop named Clifton Curtis, and his momma's so nice... she makes us both lunch."

"Your honor," Douglas started speaking. "Maybe there's an error somewhere. I mean, towns get bigger. Hasn't there ever been a city census charting the development of the town? Maybe we ought to do another."

"When was the last one?" Donna asked Howard.

"We've never had one." Howard answered.

"I want to do a full city audit." Donna looked up to her council with motherly brown eyes. "... as well as a fresh town census. Howard, you and Andy should take our records to Raleigh and ask Governor Hogan's people to help go over them so I can have a foundation to ask for more money, and don't get caught up in his old war stories. I think he's friends with Hans Schultz at the toy store!"

As the the town council met, the ladies who ran the city parent-teacher association were gathering at Marion Cunningham's house. Her daughter attended Mayberry High School while one son attended Faber College near Mount Pilot and another, Chuck, in the armed forces, although for some reason, she kept calling the school Jefferson High School and the other Wisconsin State College as if she really lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Former governess, Maggie Evans-Collins had caught herself as calling Mayberry Collinsport as if the Collins family owned it, but Collinsport was really the informal name of the community around the river where Collinwood was. Maggie had two teenage children in the high school but Carol Brady had four out of her six kids there. Angie Lopez had one daughter in high school and a son to start next year. Jill Taylor had one there and a second of her three boys about to go. Shirley Partridge had three there with two in elementary school against Claudia Finnerty's one teenager and two younger kids. The children of Samantha Stephens and Cheryl Belushi were all still in elementary school, but they still saw the importance of a good education for their children's future.

"I think we can forget about Roseanne Connor again." Maggie hung up the Cunningham family phone. "She can't tear away from her job again." She looked around the room. Marion's home looked as if it were still stuck in the Fifties, but she herself was struck how good both Angie and Jill looked wearing jeans. She thought they were just for boys. Both Shirley and Carol's were spawned directly from the fashion disaster that was the Seventies.

"Ladies," Angie Lopez took charge with Maggie by her side. "A few things we have to talk about. We got a school dance coming up and we need chaperones... sorry, Claudia, but we don't need your husband there."

"Thank god!" Claudia knew Sean only attended these things to keep an eye on their daughter, Lily.

"Cheryl," Jill looked up to her and was jealous of her Barbie-doll looks. "We can't have Jim there either. We heard about Jim andyour brotherand the No Ma'Am guys at Cheers. Sam wanted to prosecute." Cheryl completely understood. She didn't want her husband teaching his ways around kids.

"Jill," Samantha Stephens looked up from sipping her coffee. "Several of the kids love your husband's Tool Time show. How about you and Tim?"

"I can manage it, but I can't guarantee anything." Jill looked to Shirley. "Are your kids playing as the band again?'

"No," Shirley didn't think the kids of today liked the music she did with her kids did. "I hear we couldn't get Jem and the Holograms, but then the Monkees became available."

"My Marcia just loves Davy Jones!" Carol beamed.

"So do I." Angie, Cheryl and Claudia chorused together and revealed how young they really were.

"Another thing we have to discuss..." Marion played mostly hostess during these gatherings and interjected her opinion on things from time to time. "My daughter Joanie has become friends with that Shirley Fenardi girl, and this young lady had a book on witchcraft. Witchcraft. She said it was from the school library; can you believe that? Should the school have those kinds of books?"

"Mrs. Cunningham," Samantha looked up from sipping her tea. "Do you have anything against a noble religion that predates Christianity?"

"Samantha," Maggie lifted her head. "You and Angelique aren't going to make a snit over this, are you? I'm sure it was completely innocent. It's not like they're..."

"Worshipping the devil?" Angie asked out loud.

"It's not a demonic religion." Samantha started. "It's based on the tenets of mother earth and devout spiritualism. Please don't confuse it with the stuff the kids see in the movies..." Samantha's voice was interrupted by the sound of rapping at the front door of the house. Laying out more finger sandwiches, Marion opened the door to meet Roseanne Connor finally joining them and bringing her blue collar lifestyle and raucous sense of humor.

"I'm here!" Roseanne stood outside in her waitress uniform. "Where's the beer!"


	7. Chapter 7

PART SEVEN

"Sheriff," Local con man and would-be entrepreneur Sam Haney stood in the Mayberry Jail and looked out to Andy. "How long do I have to be locked up this time?"

"A week." Andy was busy signing several papers. "How many times do I have to tell you about going round and selling that junk?"

"Junk?" Haney was offended. "I sell nothing but the best stuff."

Andy wasn't about to get into another screaming argument with the man. Haney was a recurring thorn in his side along with Ernest T. Bass and those three weird woodsmen calling themselves Larry, Darryl and Darryl. He just continued on his work and rolled his eyes up apprehensively when someone started coming in through the back of the courthouse.

"Sheriff..." Deputy Enos Strate came striding inside happier than he'd ever been in his life. Being a Mayberry deputy in his new tan police uniform meant a lot to him and not having to chase his friends in police pursuits nor bilking tourists for their money meant a lot more to him. It meant he was now a real deputy fully respected by the town and not just a henchman for a corrupt county commissioner like Boss Hogg. He looked to Andy with determined admiration for the man. "I took the trash out and I fixed the stop sign over on Fifth Street. Oh, I also straightened up the bulletin board."

"Oh..." Andy looked up in fear. "Barney's going to have a conniption." He looked back to Enos. "Uh, son, school's about to let out; why don't you go get the crossing and then you can sign off." He paused a minute. "I reckon you'll go see Daisy after that. I kind of get the feeling you're kind of sweet on her."

"Well," Enos grinned as the original thirty-year-old virgin and held his cap in his hands. "We've been friends since kindergarten; I don't imagine she sees me any way else."

"In that case," Haney spoke up in his cell, "I've got a love potion in my truck created and sworn by Jed Clampett's Granny Mae Moses herself. It'll get you your fondest heart's desire or else my name isn't..."

"Haney, would you shut up!" Andy screamed losing his patience. "No one wants your junk. You beat everything, you know that!"

Enos just saluted and went on to do his job, but as he went out, Barney was coming in pushing ahead of him two young men who had been scuffling and arguing. Both of the young men were maybe in their Thirties. Andy recognized one as local celebrity Jerry Seinfeld while the other one he had briefly noticed a few times. Ryan Daillion stood and composed himself before Andy as Seinfeld sarcastically rolled his eyes at this travesty to his being arrested. Barney pushed forward an ugly statue of a figure with a skeletal head mounted on a base on the desk before Andy.

"Ange," Barney started. "I caught these two fighting over at that apartment housing on the edge of town." He flipped open his pad. "Jerry Seinfeld, age 35…" His voice spoke up legally and with authority. "…Caught one Ryan Daillion, age 32, trying to take one…" Barney paused to critically sneer at the ugly statue now on the desk. "Really ugly statue."

"For the last time, " Jerry spoke up. "I'm holding the statue for a friend. I can't sell it without getting his permission."

"Sheriff," Ryan turned to plead his case to Andy. "This statue belongs to a private collection; I'll pay anything to get the statue back."

"Well," Andy looked uncomfortable with the face of the ugly statue looking at him. "Is there something about this statue that you can't wait to buy it from Mr. Seinfeld's friend?"

"Well," Ryan now reflected on Jack and Micki from the store telling him to get it back at all costs. He looked nervously to Andy, up to Barney by his side and then back upon Jerry. "It's kind of dangerous."

"Dangerous?" Barney scoffed. "How can a statue be dangerous?"

"Tales From the Crypt!!!" The skeletal head of the barely foot tall statue suddenly screeched out loud and began laughing with its lower jaw vibrating out of staccato with its high-pitched unearthly laugh. Andy made a face and Barney started struggling to get his gun from his holster. Jerry's face made a look of surprised abject fear realizing that thing had been in his place and took a step backward. Only Ryan barely responded. The statue once again seemed frozen and immobile bronze, but Andy was carefully sliding it to the edge of his desk.

"He can have it!!!" Jerry cried out screaming at someone named Kramer for giving him that thing. The courthouse doors slammed shut behind him leaving behind him Andy and Barney looking at the ugly metal statue and then back up to Daillion. Barney had a gun on the ugly statue in case it started talking again. He was shaking frightened out of his wits, his eyes were bulging and his pulse was racing. Andy stood to calm him despite being rattled himself.

"Son, get that thing out of here before it says something else!!" Andy yelled an order as Ryan grabbed the ugly statue and began to racing out with it. As he returned back to the Curious Goods Antique Store, he was yelling at the statue for talking and becoming a spectacle while Drew Carey and a hurried Jack Bauer looked at him then each other.

"Did you see that?!" Barney was waving his gun clicking away the trigger to empty chambers. "Did you see that?!"

"Barney! Calm down!!!"

"Did you see that?!" Barney felt his gun being taken from him. "Did you… Hey, who messed up the bulletin board?!!"

"Barney," Andy tried to change the subject. "It was a trick!!" He tried lying. "It was a trick! I was just funning you." He lowered his voice hoping the thing with the statue was just one of his gags. "I, uh, got you good, didn't I?"

"It was a trick?" Barney slowly calmed with his own cocksure grimace taking his face. "You did that?"

"Yeah…" Andy refused to admit it had spooked him. "Sure, looked real, didn't it?" He was actually trying to talk himself down.

"I knew it all the time." Barney mused calmly.

"Yeah," Andy secretly felt his heartbeat. "Uh, why don't you go check on that TV Crew over on Clinton Street then go on home. I know you want to see Thelma Lou tonight."

"Yeah," Barney was now feeling himself as he reholstered his weapon. "Wait, TV Crew?"

"Yeah," Andy slow slid back behind his desk trying to forget the last few minutes. "Some TV Crew arrived this morning with permission to film here in Mayberry. They're over there filming something in front of Mike Brady's house."

"For today's episode, " Under the beret-wearing bald head of Jamie Hyneman, Nordic whiskers bristled as the TV Mythbuster spoke standing over the manhole in front of the Brady house to the camera before him. Bobby Brady, Ben Seaver, Beaver Cleaver and Spanky McFarland, four young men of nearly the same age, stood on the curb watching. Across the street were Jackson Stewart and Corey Baxter as fellow bystanders.

"We're going to be challenging the myth that alligators live in the sewers of the United States." Jamie continued.

"That's right," Bespectacled Adam Savage turned serious for the camera crew after noticing teenagers Keely Teslow and Carmen Lopez also watching from curbside. "Now, at first glance, it seems unlikely, but then as we know the sewers have a sort of food chain of their own with rats and cockroaches, but what keeps the rat level down? I think alligators do get into the sewers in through openings in rural areas near waterways."

"Well, to tell us if its possible," Jamie gestured to their guest for the show. "We got our alligator expert here, Steve Irwin, all the way from the Melbourne Zoo in Australia."

"G'day, guys," Steve stepped before the camera crew excited to be part of this inter-series crossover and shook hearty handshakes with the rest of his Discovery Channel colleagues. "So good to be here. This ought to be interesting."

"So tell me, Steve," Adam took the role of the donate host of his series. "Do you think alligators live in the Mayberry sewers under the street?"

"I guess that's what we're going to find out." Steve answered as junior mythbuster Grant Imahara groaned from sliding aside the manhole in the street. There was a pungent odor of drowned feces and rotted debris wafting up from the hole. Kari Byron stepped back to be the last one to have to enter. Jamie started to set one step down into the opening, but then someone already in the hole stuck his head up to the light gasping for fresh air.

"Hey, guys, what's up?" It was Mike Rowe, the host of another prominent Discovery Channel Series known as "Dirty Jobs," dedicated to showing off the dirty and disgusting jobs of normal people and the extents they went through to earn an honest day's work.

"Mike, what are you still doing down there?" Jamie asked the question on his crew's mind.

"I've been lost down here for a couple of weeks looking for my car keys." Mike jingled his keys while Grant lent a hand to pull him out of the sewer. "I think I saw Nigel Marven down here too; which way to the hotel?"

"That way." Kari covered her nose with her hand to keep from inhaling the stink. Mike commented about needing a beer and continued on his way around Alice Nelson out of the Brady House and Laura Petrie from down the street. For the Mythbusters, it was time to get started. Jamie started down first into the sewer system with Steve behind him. One camera guy turned off his camera to follow down behind Adam with the soundman ahead of Kari, the red haired female mythbuster.

"Now, down here," Jamie was already filming as Kari started coming down. "We seem to have the essentials for a contained ecosystem, but we have to ask: is it sufficient enough to support life?"

Kari was waist deep into the manhole as her eyes rounded in fear at the dinosaurian roar echoing through the underground subterranean world under the town below her feet. Grant had shoved her airborne in a hurry to get her out of his way and Steve Irwin was clinging to his back as white as a sheet. Mythbusters and on-lookers at curbside scattered in fear at whatever was capable at making that noise.

"I never seen a crikey THAT big before!!!" He screamed as Adam clung to his left leg. Jaime and Adam were fighting and pushing each other out of the way as their cameraman and sound guy tunneled up from the nearby Cleaver property. There was a lot of scrambled screaming and pushing as one Mythbuster placed himself ahead of the other. Tossing Kari over his shoulder, Grant jumped into the back of the white pickup being driven by Jesse Duke heading to the bank. Steve outran Adam as Jamie fled into the other direction and dived into the open basement window of Homer Simpson's home on the next street over.

"Oooo, look Homer…" Marge Simpson's voice sounded. "It's Jaime Hyneman from that Discovery Channel show!"

"Marge, get my bat!"

Meanwhile, from down in the manhole in the street, something very large settled and sloshed through the dark, wet concrete tunnels with determined reptilian prowess and presence.

"Now, Spot, what are you doing down here again?" Herman Munster called from under the street for the family pet to come back home.


	8. Chapter 8

PART EIGHT

From her house, Gladys Kravitz had been staring out her dining room window at the figure sitting on the bus bench on the corner. He didn't look threatening, he looked like a businessman in that dark gray suit and tie. He had been smoking and puffing on that cigarette for over an hour, and despite the length of the block, she had the uncanny feeling that he could see her. It was almost as if he could sense her watching him, and when he knew she was looking at her, he'd lift his head up to her, inhale a short drag of his cigarette and turn his head toward her just as she hid behind her curtain.

"Submitted for your approval…" He looked out across the street to imaginary listeners that only existed in his mind. "Mrs. Gladys Theodora Kravitz, a bored housewife whose only distraction from the boredom of her life is looking in through the windows of her neighbors. You see, she has never heard the old idiom of curiosity killing the cat…"

"Abner," Gladys called over to her husband watching _The Benny Hill Show_ on TV. "That man's talking to himself again. He gives me the creeps; I'm calling Sheriff Taylor again."

"Gladys," Abner Kravitz was dressed in his "No-Ma'am" t-shirt; it had been given to him upon joining Al Bundy's garage club of he-men holding on to their former glories. Among other members were Jefferson Darcy, Tim Taylor, Howard Borden, Sam Allen from the meat market, bartender Sean Finnerty, contractor Jim Belushi and his brother-in-law, Andy Harridge. "If you call Sheriff Taylor again, you might get attacked!"

"Why would he do that?"

"I mean me!!!" He groaned as he rose up to his feet. "Great, you made me miss that girl's bra blowing up. I'm going over to Al's!!!"

"I don't want you hanging out with Al Bundy anymore!!!" Gladys couldn't be taken seriously when she tried ordering him around. "Sam Malone was going to sue when you guys trashed Cheers."

"We didn't trash it," Abner picked up his jacket from the coat rack by the door. "We defended ourselves from Marcie and her goon squad. She trashed it!!!"

"Abner, I'm warning you…" Gladys stopped and looked out through the front door after her husband had opened it. Abner looked to and started mooning from afar the two shapely young ladies crossing in front of the O'Riley house across the street and heading to the Stephens house. They had to be schoolgirls, but while Abner admired them for their looks, Gladys stared at them suspiciously and tried to guess what they were up to in that house. "There's goes two more over into the Stephens house. I wish I could get in there and find out what going on."

"Gladys, for the last time," Abner needed to get away from her for his piece of mind. "Mind your own business!!!"

"Hi, Mrs. Stephens…" Willow Rosenberg was met by Samantha Stephens on the front stoop of the house. She was a high school student as was her associate, Sara Bailey, but like Samantha and the rest of her company, they all had something else in common – an ability to tap into and conjure magic. A brief pause for a motherly hug and greetings, Willow looked up and recognized Sabrina Spellman from her school. She didn't know Sabrina was a witch like herself. She had suspected Prue Halliwell and had known about Angelique Bouchard-Collins, but Evie Garland had turned out to be something else – the daughter of an astronaut from another planet. Her psychokinetic powers might prove necessary for this gathering of witches. Sara was still barely familiar with her Wiccan heritage, but with friends like Willow, she was getting to be quite adept in her mystical prowess. Everyone in the Stephens house had become very aware that something was wrong with the town. None of them had lived in Mayberry before; they had each once lived far and scattered about from each other. Angelique from Collinsport, Maine… Willow from Sunnyside, Caifornia, Prue from the Bay area of San Francisco… Samantha from Connecticut… they all knew a powerful mystical force had to have been responsible for merging them from across time and space into this common vicinity and neither Samantha or Angelique had the power to do it alone. Sabrina looked up to her Aunt Samantha wondering if they were really related or if it was because of this merged universe. Prue somehow felt she knew Angelique or at least her son, William, who might or might not have dated Sabrina or Evie. None of them were sure, but they had to pool their powers to pull their worlds apart.

"Samantha…" Angelique sipped a bit of sherry looking around this gathering of witches and one ingénue of extra-terrestrial power. "Is Jeannie coming? You know, Colonel Nelson's wife?" Having kept this gathering secret from her husband, Samantha reacted waving her hands in a panic and stifling and scream.

"Anj.." Samantha implored her. "Don't even mention her name?! Believe me, we don't need her here!!!"

"Why?" Sabrina and Evie had been playing chess while waiting for Willow and Sara. "Did Colonel Nelson marry a witch?"

"Whatever she is…" Prue had met Jeannie in her sister's club. "Trust me, we don't want her here."

"Are you sure I can contribute anything?" Sara Bailey had been lurking near Willow since arrival. "I mean, the last major craft I wove was binding Nancy against harm to herself or to others. I don't think I could…"

"Sara…" Angelique motioned over around Willow and past Sabrina. Her face peaked with her beaming grin. "You have tremendous potential as a witch. You are much more stronger than those other girls."

"Okay, ladies," Samantha had produced a glass globe to place on her coffee table. "This will personify our true places in the universe, but before we start any major spells…" She moved a pillow from the sofa that Willow could sit between Sabrina and Prue. "I think we out to do an outreach – a sensory awareness spell to reach beyond the mortal realm and look back on it and see if we can spot anything that would suggest what has happened."

"I've never tried this one before." Sabrina pulled a long lock of hair behind her ear. "Is it like a teleportation spell?"

"Almost…" Prue started thinking back on her grandmother's Book of Spells. "You see, Sabrina, you and Samantha are the only true blood Wiccans here; the rest of us except Evie are pretty much mortal witches. We've got several levels of power here. What this is basically a highly advanced form of astral projection from this plane of existence and looking back…"

"I don't think I can do that." Evie spoke up.

"I can drag you along." Willow remarked.

"Hands on the globe," Angelique reacted first with Samantha by her side and the younger girls following their lead. "Focus your minds on the globe as if it were a crystal ball and keep focusing until a vision starts to form. Will your life force to leave your bodies and enter the universe…"

"If I can't find my way back to my body, I want to be Phoebe, Prue's sister." Sabrina cracked jovially.

"She doesn't need any body guests, thank you." Prue added trying to achieve a higher plane of existence.

"I think I'm seeing something…" Willow started seeing in her mind's eyes a shape in the darkness. With it, she felt she was rising up off her feet and Sara was with her by her side. She felt ethereal, like a spirit and had visions of her past and of the women with her. She was slaying vampires with Buffy again and living through the birth of Samantha's daughter. Someone here was married to a former vampire. She felt the anxiety of Evie learning her father was from the planet Antereus. She had a vision of the Nancy that Sara was always speaking of; she resembled the actress, Fairuza Balk. Sabrina felt her mind drifting through the halls of Olympus and wanted to be there. She saw Viking gods in an Asgardian tavern and Native American gods pursuing mystical buffalo over other dimensional plains. Angelique felt the shades of her former dark lords trying to tempt her and Samantha felt the energies of the younger women passing through her. There was something else here - an image hovering above them all trying to come into focus. It was shapeless and boundless, almost a shadow of the sky as if such a thing was possible. The closer they tried to reach it the further it seemed away. It was enormous in size; it was another world beyond their own - a far more larger world than their own. When Willow tried to look at it, she felt as if she was being pushed away. Evie felt as if she were someone else. She was another kind of extra-terrestrial progeny with a long red cape and skirt, blue blouse and an indiscernible symbol stretched across her breasts. Angelique was moving through other identities as well. She was the victim of Cark Kolchak, the dead wife of a David Banner and another married woman. Samantha was in the life of Lizzie Borden, the wife of the Sundance Kid and others. Prue was living the life of a Beverly Hills socialite named Brenda Walsh, Willow was a farm girl, Sabrina was the Girl of Steel now… they were merging in and out of other lives unable to take all the images. Sara was an action hero with Schwarzeneggar, and when she felt herself being killed, she screamed out in pain. The image above them exploded bathing them in burning white light.

Ten blocks away in the Chill Grill, Raven Baxter felt the psychic onslaught in her head. First visions of the future, and now the sensation of her body nearly pulled off its feet, she tried ignoring it and went about her business.

"Sara…" Willow reached to help her friend to her feet. The globe had exploded showering everyone with particles of glass and knocking back the sofa and chairs. Prue Halliwell coughed trying to regain her composure.

"Are anyone else's clothes smoking?" Sabrina tried standing up on the over-turned sofa.

"What was that?!!" Evie was patting out her burning clothes. "It felt as if I was an actress reliving ever role I'd ever done, and that shape…"

"A window in space…" Prue had been closest to the image. "With a million, billion people watching us from the other side like a…"

"Television… turned inside out… our lives being lived and created by actors…" Angelique reached down to help Samantha to her feet. She noticed everyone looking at her derisively. "Yes, we do have a TV at Collinwood!!!"

"It doesn't make sense…" Samantha lifted her head up and recaught her breath. "I don't know what it means or how it explains us all living now in Mayberry, but…" She was getting odd looks herself. Angelique reacted as if she didn't recognize her oldest and dearest friend. "Why are you all looking at me like that?"

"Mrs. Stephens…" Prue's jaw dropped a bit. "Your face…"

Samantha lightly sprinted around Angelique to the entryway at the bottom of her staircase and looked at her reflection in the mirror by her front door. A feeling of shock overcame her and then a feeling of fear for when Darren came home and she had to explain what had happened. Her fingers reached to her face to see if it was real.

She looked exactly like blonde actress Nicole Kidman!!!!!


	9. Chapter 9

9

Barney was Acting Sheriff in charge of the courthouse again and had to swear to Andy that he would not arrest everyone in town again, but then, if the town had inexplicably swelled five times in size as it seemed, that was not going to happen. Andy had left for Raleigh with Howard to meet with the Governor to ask for new funds for the courthouse in person, and turn over the results of the new local census. It had given Howard a chance to tinker with his laptop computer – an electronic toy he never knew had existed, but when he saw all the kids with them, he wondered why he didn't know about them long before. Floyd and Goober were part of Howard's MySpace account along with Drew Carey, the employee manager for the Louder store in Raleigh and Sam Allen, the butcher who dated the housekeeper at the Brady house. Barney wanted to get his own MySpace account, and Thelma Lou was going to help him do it. She had become adept at the computer while working for Bluth Realty in town. The company was having ups and downs with its founder in prison for embezzling funds and alleged treason. Clad in his salt-and-pepper suit and white fedora, Barney stood outside the company by the mild glow of streetlights and stars in the sky waiting for his sweetie. Thelma Lou was his true love and the one girl he wanted to marry. It seemed he had memories of dreams of her marrying and leaving Mayberry, but now, it seemed they were just dreams. Images of another reality that no longer existed in this seemingly restructured world. As he waited, Barney said a cordial hello to Mary Ann Sommars and her fiancé, William "Buddy" Gilligan coming toward him. The two had been castaways on an island in the South Pacific and had picked here to live. Gilligan looked a bit like Dud Walsh, another local boy married to Charlene Darling up in the hills, and Mary Ann taught cooking with her cousin, Jaime Sommars, the history teacher, at the high school. Acknowledging their existence, Barney tilted his hat up thinking he recognized escaped convict Frank Scofield heading around the Old Oak on his way for the church then shrugged it off and waved hello to sports writer Oscar Madison heading into Walker's Drugstore on the square and then reporter Tim O'Hara's Uncle Martin coming out of the electronics place. Closing up behind the two was, Ellie Walker. She had once been sweet on Andy before Helen, but now it was suggested she was friendly with local photographer Felix Unger. A sound out the corner of his ear and Barney snapped to attention holding daisies in his right hand. A big grin spread across his face and Thelma Lou emerged from Bluth Realty. She looked up with her childlike brown eyes and beamed herself to her favorite beau.

"Something pretty for someone pretty." He grinned ear to ear.

"Barney…" She gave him a peck to his jaw. "Sorry, I'm a bit late, but Gob Bluth was here this morning and got several of us upset with his magic tricks. I swear… I don't know how Michael deals with him."

"Thelma Lou," Barney took her arm under his and walked the moonlit beam shining over the square from Bluth Realty toward the post office across from Walker's Drugstore. "Let's forget about the Bluths… why everyone in town knows the father is hiding in the attic of their house on the edge of the county!"

"Barney…" Scoffing at that rumor, Thelma Lou stepped up on the walkway from the asphalt street toward Weavers Furniture Store next to the Post Office. The automobile traffic was light and steady with a few cars passing between them and the Mayberry Theatre was across the street. The movies playing there starred Nicholas Cage as a fiery motorcycle rider and Mark Hamill as an adventurer in a galaxy far, far away. "No movie tonight?"

"Sit with a bunch of kids watching sci-fi pics?" Barney grinned proudly at his beautiful ingénue on his arm. "That ain't for us. I got us reservations as Jack's Bistro around the corner." He mugged and grimaced as the main man in this town. "Besides, I already saw both movies about seventeen times; you wouldn't like them."

"Jack's Bistro?" Thelma Lou's baby-doll brown eyes lit up at the idea of eating there. "Barney, that's a bit pricey." Her voice became a bit cautionary with a honeyed sweet accent to them. "How did you manage that?"

"My cousin Ralph got me a discount." Barney confessed matter-of-factly. "He knows the owner."

"You don't have a Cousin Ralph."

"I didn't know about him till a week ago." Barney and Thelma Lou came upon the Mayberry Bank and turned at the corner. "He manages the Apartment House up the street from the filling station with Seinfeld, Buchman, Tribbiani and all them living there."

"Ralph Furley is your cousin?" Thelma Lou was now the one having reverse déjà vu as memories she didn't know she had came rushing into her. "We own the building now. George Bluth Sr. bought the building out from under Bart Furley last year."

"Don't mention Cousin Bart." Barney had nothing but contempt for his dishonest relative. "He sold my Cousin Luther a deserted old house on Warren Harding Road for five times it was worth!" He came upon Jack's Bistro and opened the door for Thelma Lou. Stepping aside for Ralph Hinkley and his girlfriend, Pamela Davidson, coming out, Thelma Lou looked upon what seemed to be a very posh and comfortable restraunt with a square of booths and tables adorned with plants from the local plant store and French tintype pictures and furnishings. Bridget Hennessey, Joanie Cunningham and Amanda Collins from Collinwood worked as waitresses here. Thelma Lou recognized a few friends and neighbors. Paul and Cate Hennessy were present tempting their daughter's patience by watching her work and Bobby and Pamela Ewing were celebrating their fifteenth wedding anniversary. One of the dining patrons was Victor Baxter, the owner of the local teen hang-out called the Chill Grill, but he and his wife, Tonya thought young Olivia Kendall with her parents at another table looked a lot like their daughter Raven as a young girl. Justin Russo was in a awkward date with Harper Finkle as was Ted Mosby and Dr. Stella Zinman in a double date with Leonard Hofstadter and Penny Packer from Nebraska. At another table, local cartoonist Henry Rush was celebrating another occasion with his wife, Muriel, while Sean Finnerty tried to enjoy his dinner with his wife while trying to avoid another public fight with Al Bundy and his wife trying to pull another dine-and-dash from this restaurant. Barney had been outside the place the week before and caught Steven Hyde and his gang pulling the exact same thing.

"You must be Mr. Furley's cousin." Owner and host Jack Tripper turned from his podium to welcome and seat the deputy. "Welcome to my Bistro…" He caught on something else. "He wasn't kidding when he said you two looked alike."

"Well," Barney mugged a bit at the suggestion. "I'd like to think I got all the looks in the family." He looked at Thelma Lou passing her coat to Jack's wife, Vicki, acting as the restaurant matroness then leaned in closer to whisper to Jack. "You did promise a forty percent discount, right?"

"Forty?!!!!" Jack's head lifted in surprise and yelled toward his kitchen.

"Come on, Jack!" Ralph Furley wore a chef hat and looked out from a window to the kitchen as he spooned and handed dinner plates. "You can afford it now! He's public servant for crying out loud!" His attitude switched from defensive to over-inflated pride. "You're going to love the food here, Barney. It's the best restaurant in town!"

"Say what?!" Victor Baxter lifted his head up at the implication that his place, The Chill Grill, came second.

"Well, who am I to argue with that?" Barney beamed and looked to Jack helping Thelma Lou to her seat. He wanted the honor to do that, but she was already sitting. Vicki took his hat to hang and Barney unbuttoned his salt-and-pepper jacket to sit. First thing he noticed was the prices and then tried figuring the discount in his head. Thelma Lou was such a peach; she was already looking at the cheaper more affordable meals. She bemused secretly as Barney once again tried to be a big shot even as he mispronounced hors d'oeuvres and pate, but she did love him very much. He was the man she loved, and the man she wanted to be the father of her future children.

"Thelma Lou," Michael Bluth recognized his loyal secretary. Sitting with his date Fallon Carrington at an adjacent booth, Michael had just turned his head while discussing his sister's new charity and had noticed her sitting at a table between him and the Rushes at a window. "I must be paying you too much if you can afford to eat here."

"Michael," Thelma Lou looked to Barney studying the menu and looking to Jack for guidance. "I'm here with my Barney."

"Oh," Michael reached his hand across to finally meet the deputy. "Honor to finally meet you Barney."

"Honor to meet you too." Barney reached across and shook hands. "How's your father?"

"He's…" Michael wondered why he asked that. "Incommunicado right now."

"Communicado?" Barney thought he had said something else. "That's an island in the South Pacific, isn't it?"

"Uh, no, not really…" Michael tried to understand that reference and turned back to his date. Fallon had sipped some of her wine and ate more of her salad as she looked back upon Michael. Her father had not cared for George Bluth Senior, but he was all for her and Michael having a relationship. The Bluths were basically uncultured new money, but Michael as she was discovering was a prince – a prince who must have been adopted into that rude family.

"Michael…" She spoke with her perfect British accent. "I wanted to ask about your Cousin Lindsay. Is she's really rallying to save the Old Rose Red. I haven't seen her since finishing school."

"The mansion north of town." Michael took the time to cut his trout almandine. "She's not really into preservation; she just likes the attention and prestige."

"At least you two aren't really related."

"Actually," Michael leaned back into the booth. "It turns out we are."

NARRATOR: "_Michael was right. Lindsay had turned out to be his sister from his father's first marriage. George Senior had tried to sneak Lindsay into the family by adopting her as Nellie under Lucille's radar. Wait a second, there's another narrator here_…"

BALLADEER: "_Right about then, the Duke Boys drove into town trying to help Agent Jack Bauer stay ahead of Sheriff Lobo from Hatchepee County_."

NARRATOR: "_Is it just me or does this Mayberry seem awfully familiar_?"

BALLADEER: "_Don't worry about it_…"

"I really got to thank you boys for helping me get to the state line." Bauer hustled down in the back of the General Lee. The outfitted Dodge charger was trying to stay ahead of the law and sneak Bauer up through Mayberry County and out of the state.

"Don't worry bout it." Bo spun the General out onto the highway. "That should be the last of the roadblocks."

"Bo," Luke looked up to a dark silhouette of a black Trans-Am with a red pulsating light ahead of them. "Who's that?"

"Michael, I am in direct proximity to take out their engines with my laser." The KITT data program spoke to Michael Knight, the driver of the Knight Industries Two Thousand gradually picking up speed and hoping to capture the rogue government agent.

"Not just yet KITT," Michael started running heading on with his foot to the gas. "First, let's show them we mean business."

Coming up on the same crossroads, a psychedelic painted van was coming up on the outfitted trans am and the altered Dodge charger. Its teenage driver watched the spectacle with a veggie burger clenched in his teeth and gripped the wheel slowing down then turned to his Great Dane riding in the empty front seat by him.

"Look, Scoob," Norville "Shaggy" Rogers took the burger from his mouth as he spoke to his massive canine friend sitting up in the passenger seat. "It looks like those guys are going to have a major accident..."


	10. Chapter 10

PART TEN

At one time, it seemed as if it took Andy over an hour to drive the over fifty miles from Mayberry into Raleigh, but the trip this time took just barely forty-five minutes. It was almost as if Mayberry had expanded and had taken over the neighboring communities of DeQueen Junction and Bannertown, but it also seemed that Raleigh had come a bit closer as well. The drive was a bit different as well, full of commuters and landmarks Andy and Howard had never noticed before like that large mansion known as Collinwood over the horizon or the tiny Hooterville community along the way with the old tin Lizzy engine carrying guests to the Shady Rest Inn up in the hills to the south. The Darling Family lived in the more remote hills, as did Jed Clampett before he made his fortune. Along the way, Andy drove waving and passing Luanne Poovie-Pyle, Gomer's bride, bringing his lunch to the garage so he wouldn't have to eat at Mel's Diner up the street on the corner with the highway. Goober Pyle, meanwhile, preferred eating at the diner. The last time he was left alone at the garage, a voice out of the radio claimed to be a maintenance man named Joel Robinson, who had been shot into space by his employer and trapped on a satellite to watch bad horror and sci-fi movies. The only person who believed Goober of the exiled janitor was the local fortuneteller, Cassandra Peterson, who ran the local Elvira's Macabre Magic Store.

On his drive to Raleigh, Andy passed by local Faber College and looked forward to the day Opie would be old enough to go there. Howard was part of the Faber College Board in addition to the local PTA and like Andy, they both hoped Delta Fraternity was long gone by time Opie was old enough. The fraternity spokesman was Eric Stratton, and he was just as unbearable a character as Sam Haney or Eddie Finnerty. Stratton and his fraternity brothers on the surface seemed like good boys, but they were always being accused of shoplifting and vandalism, charges Barney had yet to stick. There was a rumor they had stolen test answers from Professor T. E. Stokes, and just last week, mechanic Arthur Fonzarelli had to go to the college to defend Richie Cunningham from the Faber frat brothers, laying out Daniel Simpson Day, the nephew of Jack Dalton, a local pilot. Recently, Stratton seemed to have been scared straight when he started dating local cutie, Marilyn Munster, and met her family. Mayberry High School Student Buffy Summers had some rather bizarre stories about Marilyn's grandfather, a known compatriot of Fester Addams from Mayberry's other wealthy family.

Raleigh seemed just as busy as he recalled, and Andy felt in another world upon checking into the Tipton Hotel and meeting the mother of Cody and Zack Martin. Their mother, Carie Martin, was a lovely lounge singer for the hotel currently dating Jay Clemens, a Mayberry local who resembled her ex-husband. After reporting to Carie about her sons' shenanigans in Mayberry without their father, Andy was off to the Raleigh Town Hall to meet Governor Robert Hogan, a former war hero planning his candidacy for presidency. Hogan had replaced Governor James Gatling; his Deputy Governor Benson DuBois was now Hogan's State Examiner. Their offices were in the town hall, a part of the greater city courthouse structure and Andy's route to keep his appointment took him past Judge Harold T. Stone's courtroom where Billy Thomas defended Cark Kolchak for being a public nuisance. CSIs Sara Sidle and Horatio Caine stood by to provide forensics in a case for detectives Kris Munroe and Kelly Garret of the Townsend Detective Agency. Grace Hanadarko snuck a cigarette while waiting for a warrant between J.R. Ewing and Alexis Carrington. Chris Titus paced nearby trying to divorce himself from his father while Bull Shannon dragged Frank Scofield back to lock-up to wait pick-up by federal agents. Within a few minutes, Scofield would be loose again, freed by the inept deeds of Officers Gunther Toody and Francis Muldoon.

"Governor?" Secretary Peggy Callahan entered the Governor's office. "Sheriff Taylor is here."

"What, oh…" Hogan tossed his pocket game into a top drawer and tried to act official. He had met Sheriff Taylor a year ago to commend Barney for being plucky enough to ticket his car. Back then, the Mayberry mayor was Ed Pike, a portly, self-serving public official who tried effortlessly to impress him. Hogan didn't like the guy, but he did like Donna Garland, the cute former caterer with the gifted daughter. Donna had a lot of potential for a single mom thrust into serving her town. Composing himself, Hogan rose from his desk and re-familiarized himself with the honest sheriff and his trustworthy clerk. After brief greetings and warm handshakes, the atmosphere turned to business.

"So," Hogan took his desk. "Tell me about this budget problem in Mayberry?"

"Well, sir, " Howard briefly noticed the photo of former Nazi commander Wilhelm Klink on Hogan's desk. The former Nazi had turned against his country at the end of the war to follow Hogan to the states and retire. "Mayberry in some dire restraints. We're missing about three-point-eight million dollars in revenue and can't figure out where it is." He produced copies of the town records as compared to the new local census that claimed Mayberry now had a population of one million, seven hundred and eighteen thousand and three hundred and sixty-five not counting the local hillbillies, mountain folk and homeless. The file showed that Mayberry in 1965 was only about twelve miles from one side of town through the town square to the other end, but now those exact same town limits from the same town limits were spread twenty-six miles apart. Even old-timer Frank Myers who owned the first house entering into Mayberry confessed that the lights of Raleigh had suddenly become more visible from his house.

"Is this for real?" Hogan read the file and tried to understand it.

"Well, as far as we know…" Andy admitted. "Now, there is a possible margin for error, that's why Mayor Garland sent us: to appeal to you directly for help in figuring out the problem. You've been very good to Mayberry since the storms last year took out half the farms, and we need to figure out what's going on there."

"Andy, Howard…" Hogan leaned back in his seat and tilted his chin to his chest. "To tell the truth, I'm already on top of what's happening in Mayberry. You see… whatever's been going on up there seems to be filtering into Raleigh. A place called Melville's replaced my favorite restaurant. We've been getting and seeing lawyers and police officers I've never heard of. The Commodore Hotel is now called the Tipton, a place with over two hundred years of history. I've got police captains changing constantly. I still thought Joe Friday had the job, but now its Barney Miller. It's bothering me too. I don't feel old enough to have been in World War Two, and yet, I have no memories of Viet Nam or the Korean conflict."

"This is getting spooky, Andy." Howard confessed with his milquetoast look.

"Spooky doesn't begin to describe it." Another figure had entered the room accompanied by his strikingly attractive partner. "I'm Fox Mulder with the X-Files division of the FBI; this is my partner, Dana Scully." Mulder had facts and figures he wanted to discuss with Sheriff Taylor concerning satellite photos taken of Mayberry from orbit and whether or not anyone calling himself Lt. Starbuck had passed through the town. What was happening in the once tiny town was having larger repercussions elsewhere. He knew this because he had three time-travelers in federal protection named James Kirk, John Robinson and an android named Data claiming they were from as many as two hundred years from the future. Kirk was supposed to be a 24th Century Starship captain, and Robinson from a 21st Century sleeper ship that was supposed to carry his family to Alpha Centauri. Data claimed he had known a much older Kirk, later reasoning that this Kirk was a younger version of the captain he had met.

"Andy," Hogan leaned back in a covert nature. "Mulder is bringing you the funds you need directly from President Josiah Bartlett on the proviso that you allow a joint CIA-Military adjunct in town to investigate what's going on in town."

"Well…" Andy grew a bit unsettled as he and Howard exchanged glances. "What's that mean exactly?"

"Sheriff…" Scully stepped forward with her violet jacket buttoned up against her dark blouse. "By no means do we want anyone in town knowing what we doing are there. We are solely there to do an investigation of the town; we do not want to hinder or encumber activity in the town in any way. Can we have your cooperation in this?"

"No one in town needs to know you're there?" Andy looked at Howard then to Hogan. Howard had drawn silent; Hogan was merely observing these proceedings. "Ma'am, I don't even know what's going on, but if it will explain all these people who suddenly know me and why I'm suddenly getting lost in my own home town, I'll personally lock my own deputy in jail to do it."

"Not that Barney needs help in that area." Howard added to Mulder.

"Thank you, sheriff." Dana reached forward to shake his hand in compliance. "You won't know we're there." She then turned toward Mulder as Andy asked Governor Hogan of all FBI agents were as pretty as her. Hogan said there was and their visit became more cordial to talking about fishing and Aunt Bea's cooking. Mulder instead leaned into Dana in a subdued manner and whispered to her before the door to Hogan's office.

"I think what's happening in Mayberry could be linked to Samantha Stephens and whatever she is." Mulder voiced to Dana under breath. "My last sources placed her in Westport, Connecticut, not Mayberry, North Carolina. My research also places her as over two hundred years old. That's younger than the Kevin Sorbo look-alike working at the school."

"Mulder," Dana was tired of his UFO theories. "You said the same thing about detective Nicholas Knight and he was clearly not a vampire. Michael St. John said so."

As hard as Mulder tried to be silent, he could not keep his voice from being overheard by the lovely Teri Hatcher look-alike outside Hogan's door. A reporter for the Daily Planet in town, the determined and erstwhile reporter named Lois Lane was usually rushing to beat Jack McGee to cases, but now she had a story about a small town that was mysteriously getting larger. Forget McGee and his idiot Hulk-sightings, this was a case actually being kept secret from the denizens of the town. If only she could get Clark to help her, but he was getting an interview from Bruce Wayne in Gotham City on the coast. She took out her cell phone and started sneaking away, but then she found her way blocked by FBI agent Bill Maxwell and OSI Agent Steve Austin.

"Ma'am," Austin lifted an eyebrow to her. "You'll have to come with us…"


	11. Chapter 11

PART ELEVEN

Brunette, cute and attractive, the lovely ingénue known as Melinda Gordon owned the local antique stop on the square down at the far end of the street from the courthouse and the theatre. The length of the street ran from the courthouse past Floyd's barbershop, Foley's old location now sold to Emmett Clark's Fix-It Shop where he sold his excess parts to Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, the vacant lot backing the rear of the Red Boot Pub owned by Sean and Eddie Finnerty and then the Mayberry Hotel where travelers like Angus MacGyver and Colt Seaver often stayed no more than just a night. Across the alley from the theatre was the Mayberry Grand Theatre where kids like Spanky McFarland, Eddie Munster and Beaver Cleaver rushed back to see the Star Wars flick for the umpteenth time. Continuing across the street this Sunday morning, Melinda continued her jogging route as Larry Dallas ogled her in from of the Mertz Apartment House on the corner, she stepped aside to avoid Peggy Carter coming out of the Pretty Boy Nail Salon, passed the Schultz Toy Store next to it with Cindy Brady and her new best friend Gracie Belushi coming out of it and then Wednesday Addams contemplating burning down either Foxworthy Heating and Air or Harry's Hardware Store down the street where Dwayne Schneider and George Utley talked shop with Al Borland. Main Street looped around the library where Barbara Gordon helped over-achieving students like Carol Seaver and Cory Baxter. While the library fronted the square where her antique shop was, Melinda just continued on her jog passing the library front and grinning hello to familiar customers like Micki Foster and Elyse Keaton. It was during her long runs that Melinda liked to meditate and expand her mind as she thought of her life and where it was going. She was content with her life where it was, but her life was not always working. Her private psychic gifts had become a bit of a burden at times. She could share these problems with other psychics like Allison DuBois or Amanda Tucker, but her more psychic problems involved earthbound ghosts like Jennifer Farrell and Josette DuPres who refused to cross over or potential psychics like young Cole Sears, a prodigy whose gift was even more pure than her own. Despite these gifts, government agents like Maxwell Smart and Fox Mulder was always trying to exploit her gifts for police cases, and sometimes, when Melinda was willing to help, police experts like Gil Grissom and Temperance Brennan were too skeptical to trust her insights.

Finally looking up from where she was, Melinda noticed the she was in the more affluent part of Mayberry with all its period mansions and antebellum homes. Julia Sugarbaker ran her business from her home somewhere around here, and Frank Lambert and Al Borland were restoring the old Rimshaw House at the end of the block. From behind the vine and iron-wrought fence extending the length of the block was old Rose Red, Mayberry's most renown reputedly haunted house. Steve Rimbauer had sold the location to Thurston Howell who planned to level it and sub-divide the property, but the Mayberry Historical Society lead by Marion Cunningham and Shirley Partridge were picketing the destruction of what was considered the oldest structure in Mayberry. Melinda wasn't sure if the place was haunted; the last time she heard screams from this place, she and her husband noticed local teens Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley and Norville "Shaggy" Rogers running and screaming from out of the place as they rushed out. When Melinda slowed and peeked into the property through the high gates, she heard voices calling to her from afar - distant ethereal voices imploring her to help them build. The siren calls could be hypnotizing and mesmerizing if her psychic gifts hadn't protected her. When she looked to the vast mansion, she noticed the fifty foot long drive ended at a turn around and back around an old weed covered fountain. Wondering about the antiques she could find inside, she then noticed the fountain start spraying water again and begin filling up again. One of the ghosts was trying to get her attention again.

"Melinda… help us build… Help us to build Rose Red…."

"Mrs. Gordon?"

Melinda snapped from her trance and turned to look at Deputy Fife. She had been so entranced by the tragic spirits she hadn't heard him pull up behind her in his patrol car or stop beside the curb. His hands on his belt, trying to look professional, Barney looked a bit worried for her, but Melinda just snapped from her trance with a warm smile and promoted a similar genial response from the deputy as well.

"Are you okay?" Barney asked her. "You looked lost or something. I can give you a ride in the patrol car. That's no problem." He offered to help her then had the thought what Thelma Lou would say if she caught him driving around young girls.

"Deputy…" Melinda shined upon his obvious crush. "What would Thelma Lou say if she saw me with you?"

"Well…" Barney planned his excuse. "I'd just tell her that as a servant of the people that I was assisting you in my role as a police officer."

"I'll see you, Barney…" Melinda continued her jaunt with a warm grin. A bit smug and sure of himself, Barney watched her jogging away from under the rim of his cap and returned to his patrol car. He glanced briefly through the gate to Rose Red.

"Now, when are they going to level that place?!" He uttered under breath and a bit afraid of the place. Going on his way, he waved to Ned Flanders watering his yard then to Cliff Clavin delivering the mail. Cliff was a nice guy when he wasn't getting in fights with Neuman Newman, the fat and portly mailman always starting fights with Jim Belushi and Sean Finnerty. Lisa Simpson and Cindy Brady waved to Barney as decent law-abiding children at the turn to Maple toward the courthouse. Barney waved back to the young girls as his glance took him away from noticing B.A. Barracus driving his van hurriedly toward the Interstate. On the other side of the street, Thelma Harper carried her bag of groceries from the market toward her home and next door to Andy, Gomer Pyle had Steven Keaton's car up on the curb as he worked on it. Steven worked for the local Mayberry TV Fox Affiliate, a business Barney didn't know existed until the week before.

At the courthouse, Barney pulled up alongside the sidewalk and parked the patrol car facing a black trans-am with a pulsating red light. Recognizing it, it looked around for Michael Knight to come looking for info on a local investigation and then quickly started skirting himself into the courthouse. After all, if there were any crimes in town, it was his business to solve them. Once inside, Barney looked to see Andy changing his shirt in the back room.

"Back in town, eh…" Barney mugged back into the confident lawman he was. "How's the governor?"

"He says hey!"

"Hey to the governor!" Barney and Andy had a moment and grinned as the best friends they were. "So, uh, did we get the funds?"

"Uh… Barney…" Andy started doing a little skirting of the facts himself. "Yeah, but, uh…"

"Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!!!" Barney felt like a big man. "Another patrol car, walkie-talkies, choppers, tear gas… all the works!!! This is big, Andy!! Big!!!"

"Uh, Barney," Andy came out in his regular tan uniform for his desk. "All we're getting is another deputy named Francis Muldoon and a third patrol car for him. The money is going into the city budget and the local schools. That's what it was always for."

"What?" Barney was crushed. His face became crest-fallen and his feet left him wandering in a circle for the cells then back to the desk. His aspiration to be something more than just a small town deputy was almost there. Mayberry was no longer a small town, which meant he was almost there. He wanted more action; he wanted to show what he could do. The uniform wasn't just enough. He wanted people to think he was a hero.

"Barney," Andy was always sympathetic to Barney's ego. "I talked to the Governor, and he said that if Mayberry comes around for next year that… maybe, he can swing pay raises for all of us, but before that happens, he wants to oust J.D. out of office down in Hazzard. He's been squirreling away county funds like a crooked snake in a pond full of catfish for long enough. You know we county officials can't get raises until Hazzard is cleaned up."

"Yeah," Barney sat on the corner of Andy's desk and raised a little smile. "I know Enos and Jesse love to see it cleaned up down there too. Rosco used to be a clean sheriff."

"Yep," Andy agreed with him. "And behind Hazzard, the rest of the state can start getting back to normal."

"Sheriff!!!" Ernest T. Bass suddenly opened and slammed the doors and barricaded his body against them. He was scared for his life for once in his existence. "What's happened to this town?! There's an old lady from Tennessee making White Lightning trying to whoop me!!!"

"Get out here you gully-jumper!!!!" Granny Clampett pounded at the outside of the door.

"I still say five minutes behind the barn!" Barney looked at Andy.

"Barney, that little old lady would kill you!!!"


	12. Chapter 12

12

"Well, now, take down your fishing pole, and meet me at the fishing hole, you'll feel fresh as lemonade a setting in the shade…" Usually when Andy whistled that ditty, he immediately thought of Mayberry as the small peaceful community where everyone knew each other, but when he looked at Mayberry with four story buildings, busy sidewalks and harried merchants, that little ditty suddenly got hit with a guitar riff and a loud percussion beat as if Sean Finnerty was jamming with Keith Partridge. Hearing that tune belted by Sean on the Freddie Fillmore station made Andy change the radio dial.

"You get the best of both worlds, mix it all together and you'll have the best of both worlds…." Hannah Montana was on another station. Andy changed it again.

"…And my friends are Jem girls, Jem! Jem is my name! Beauty and fashion, that's the Jem-girl glamour, fashion and fame…" He changed the station again and heard Charlie Pace from Driveshaft, a British import now gaining popularity since Pace had vanished on his plane in the South Pacific.

"Come on, everybody… come on, everybody…" Andy changed the radio station again.

"…get the last train to Clarksville and I'll meet you at the station. I'll be there by 4:30, and there'll be no reservation so don't be slow…" Andy started to turn over to the Dave Allen at Large radio program then changed his mind on hearing jokes about the Catholic Church and switched it off altogether. Sitting at his desk, he started mulling over allowing Mel Sharples to have a parking permit for his corvette or excising altogether Clancy Wiggum as the town truant officer. Enos was doing better at it in addition to his regular duties than the fat and dim retired cop ever did. He lifted his head up to Barney pulling in the other local town drunk.

"Sheriff…" Dick Montague rather resembled local grocer Sam Whiffle. "I swear… there's a witch in the Stephens House… she sort of looks like that Nicole Kidman. Not that I'm complaining, mind you…"

"He keeps saying that, Ange." Barney held on to the shaky drunk.

"Really…" Andy looked to Montague. "And who does her husband look like?" Andy asked. He knew Samantha Stephens. For the longest time, she had looked liked TV star Elizabeth Montgomery, but now with her hair restyled and having lost a few pounds, she did look like Kidman.

"Dick York…" Montague looked at Barney and shuffled to stay on his feet. "But if I squint and close this eye, he looks like Dick Sargent from the Super Password program…"

"Squint and close one eye…" Barney had heard enough. "All right, into the cell with you…" He swung Montague into Otis's favorite cell. Andy meanwhile answered the telephone on his desk and took a phone call. As Barney turned round from locking up the town's second favorite inebriate, Andy was rising to his feet and heading for the doors heading out to the patrol car.

"Barney, the No Ma'Am guys started a fight at Moe's Tavern and we gotta go clean it up. Dang that Al Bundy, I'm going to throw the book at them this time." He opened the doors and hurried to the patrol car.

"What is it this time?" Barney was pulling out his bullet for his revolver. "Another more taste/less filling debate?"

"No," Andy started the squad car. "It was a Ginger/Mary Ann debate that turned ugly when the Skipper suddenly showed up." The vehicle started up and pulled away from the curb. Tim Taylor stepped from Floyd's Barbershop and sent a wave to his Uncle Andy then stepped aside to miss running into Lora Gilmore and her daughter Rory. The mother and daughter duo headed past Orville Munroe's Funeral and TV Repair Shop and crossed the lot toward the Mayberry Grand Hotel. John Masters was hanging posters for "Night At The Museum" with Ben Stiller to keep up with his family only films. A local detective named Monk stepped away from the two Gilmores to avoid being touched and Ellie Walker across the street hung a sign in the drugstore to re-elect Senator Burl "Gopher" Smith. Nearing the alley, Rory lifted her head and heard a crash come from above enter the alley. A dynamite-eating goat screeched and came running out ahead of Ralph Hinkley adjusting and pulling on his shirt and jacket.

"Mr. Hinkley?"

"Rory…" Ralph recognized his student. "Oh, I, uh, was just collecting aluminum cans…" He noticed her mom.

"This is my mom." Rory introduced her mother with the movie-star good looks.

"My daughter says you're her favorite teacher. " Lora beamed to the handsome blonde teacher with the movie-star looks. In her mind, he could be quite unlike dating Gob Bluth or Larry Dallas, something she was ready for.

"That's great… could you remind her she still owes me a report on _Great Expectations_." Ralph pulled on his jacket and stepped out of the way of Marion Cunningham coming from the beauty shop. "Hate to be rude, but I'm in a hurry to meet my wife." Ralph rushed across the street and stopped short from being run over by Malcolm Wilkerson on his bike. Bartender Jaime Summers was doing errands with her sister and dodging questions from high school students confusing her with a teacher named Jaime Sommars. There was no resemblance, but even Rory thought the two Jaime's had _something_ in common.

"Oh, of course…" Lora had a brief handshake with her daughter's teacher and made a look to her daughter and acknowledged her look. Rory didn't need meeting her teacher in the street to be repeated about an assignment. Most of her lackadaisical habits had come from Lily Finnerty and Kelly Bundy. When they were not running from shop to shop, they were going to their regular hangouts. When the local Mayberry youths were not in school, they frequented the local New Market Mall east of Mayberry on the Interstate. Just eleven miles from the courthouse on the former Jubal Foster farm, the expanse of stores, markets and small restaurants was a Mecca for girls like Bridget Hennessy, Jackie Burkhart and London Tipton who made a hobby out of shopping, but it was also a place of distress for hard-working men like Al Bundy who rarely saw young nubile beauties like Rachel Green and Monica Chandler. Instead, he had to deal with the returning ghastly presence of Mimi Bobeck or Roseanne Connor, although Roseanne was the least fun to insult for fear of dealing with her husband, Dan, from the Mayberry Motorcycle Shop. In leaving Bundy, Green and Chandler then had to contend with Shelia Wajimblonsky at the Vancome Counter. When the kids were not here, they were at the local popular restaurants like The Chill Grill Restaurant eating pizza or eating burgers over at Arnold's Drive-In on the make for the opposite sex. A few hung out in the basement of Eric Forman, or returning to the school to shoot baskets like Troy Bolton and Wally Cleaver. A few girls followed round the higher female cliques girls like Sharpay Evans, a blonde diva who could not understand why she and the poor girl Maddie Fitzpatrick looked so much alike! Some girls didn't care for the cliques. Winnie Goodwin frequented the Spellman House as a friend of Sabrina and a cousin of Tabitha. Seventeen-year-old Marcia Brady went through life with her sensible Seventies values and ignored music by Jesse McCarthy to listen to Davy Jones on her CD player, and Joanie Cunningham went through school with friends trying to update her Stuck-in-the Fifties lifestyle. She didn't have the body for the thong look, but she did attract boys like exchange student Fez Wilmerashtontopherlauramila. He was from an unnamed tiny Central American republic south of Mexico and north of the Panama Canal. No one knew what the name of this country was, but they knew there was one other local immigrant from down there named Esteban Ramirez working as a bellhop at the Tipton in Raleigh.

Of the students, Pim Diffy didn't care for cliques or even school. She lived misguided by her ego that she should own and run the school, but she never really planned for the human equation. Her brother claimed she was actually botching herself unconsciously because she refused to admit she had a conscience. She had been to Principal Gibb's office more often than Assistant Principal Grace Musso or even the courthouse. It was Barney who suspected she had been the one who wrote that ditty about him on the wall outside Weaver's Furniture:

"There was once a cop named Fife

Who carried a gun and a knife;

His gun was all dusty,

His knife was all rusty,

Because he never caught a crook in his life."

Despite her self-proclaimed intelligence, Pim was a horrible student. Eugene Beakman wanted her expelled for blowing up the chemistry lab (for which she brought marshmallows), and Ralph wanted her psycho-analyzed for showing in a report where the Nazis had gone wrong in their world conquest. Jaime Sommars meanwhile thought she could save Pim from herself by nurturing the good girl buried deep within the wild child, but FBI Agent Bill Maxwell warned her not to try without a whip and a chair. By placing Pim in situations that made her more human to her classmates, maybe her peers would accept her and she would behave more. It was actually having an opposite effect; by placing Pim in public, it was giving the other Mayberry students more of an opportunity to embarrass her. That was where students like Sabrina Spellman and Evie Garland joined forces to mystically teach Pim humility.

Trying to deal with those constant illusions, Pim Diffy looked over her class for a minute, turned her head disgustedly to Mrs. Sommars and then rolled her eyes. She hated oral reports even more than written reports if not more. As she started to speak, the neurons and maisons of her mind started charging and taking place with other neurons and maisons from across time. Another personality was taking over her brain and with it another mind from another individual lost in space and time.

"Any time, Mrs. Diffy..." Jaime Sommars asked the young lady.

"What?" Pim's voice wondered out loud as Dr. Sam Beckett wondered who he was and then looked across all the sixth graders looking upon him. A few minutes ago, he was in Ancient Greece with Xena and had encountered other time-travelers named Tony Neuman and Doug Phillips. Meeting them was his best chance to return to his own time. Time travelers like Darien Lambert didn't occur that often. He turned to the reflection of Pim's face staring back upon him from the glass in the side door of the classroom. He had leaped into an adolescent young girl!

"Oh boy..."

"Watch…" Lily Finnerty turned to Miley Cyrus. "She's going to start screaming she's from the future again…"

"You'd think she'd change that story." Miley mused.

Downstairs in the split-level school, Howard Sprague had handed over the papers for Principal Ed Gibb to get the school funds he needed for the increased volume of kids. Security guard Kevin Sorbo was trying to show Mrs. Sommars inaccuracies in the life of Hercules; it was almost as if he was there. Bud Bundy was again running from Larry Kubiac. Apparently Matthew Burton had told Kubiac that Bundy was responsible for spraying "WIDE LOAD" on his back. Buffy Summers was hiding a mallet and stakes in her locker as she peered over to William Collins from Collinwood. There was something odd about him and his family, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She tried to get a grasp of his character, but Bridget Hennessy kept blocking her view. Blonde, attractive and a self-avowed sex symbol, Bridget was trying to eavesdrop on Sabrina and Evie.

"Mrs. Stephens still can't get her real face and body back." Evie told the novice witch. "She needs these things from your aunts." She handed a list over.

"I'm on it…" Sabrina looked to Evie and then Bridget and gave her a look sending her away. "Does she have any idea what's going on to the world, I mean, does it still exist?"

"She seems to have an idea that the world hasn't changed, just altered…" Evie watched Kubiac stuffing Bud into a locker. Theo Huxtable walked by with his arm around Raven Baxter. "When we sent our spirits into that other plane, we might have hit a barrier preventing us from attaining another level of existence… a level that might have ceased to exist. She's going to talk to Mr. Sorbo's father about it."

"Zeus…" Sabrina made a face realizing the man's true identity. "If anyone should know…" They both turned in unison to depart out the side entrance of the school but were blocked in their path by the school's fashion zombies, Libby Chessler, Jackie Burkhart, Sharpay Evans and a host of three other girls, each of whom obsessed with shopping and clique and very little of anything else.

"What are you freaks talking about this time?" Libby largely led their materialistic coven.

"I hear Marcia Brady is going to be the next prom queen." Sabrina grinned nearly laughing and sent them all into a brief shock. Beyond them, Kellie Picker rushed for chorus class. J.T. Lambert rushed forward in a one-sided infatuation with Nicole Bradford, and Chloe Sullivan had returned to her old alma mater as a substitute teacher. Roy Hinkley left the teacher's lounge revealing more stories from his life on the island to Assistant Principal Grace Musso. Maddie Fitzpatrick rushed to make her job at the Tipton if but obsessed with from afar by William Collins. A romantic by nature and a loner against his will, he was the son of Barnabas and Angelique Collins at Collinwood. His sister, Sara, was on the student council, his cousin, Jamison, was on the school football team and he had another cousin named J.R. Loomis who seemed to be constantly in the office of Principal Ed Gibb or down at the courthouse before Sheriff Andy Taylor. Unlike the other students here in this school, he seemed amused by the people around him. He was actually mooning over beautiful female students like Sabrina Spellman, Chelsea Daniels, Lily Truscott and Maddie Fitzpatrick, he had teachers like Jaime Sommars and Eugene Beakman, role models named MacGyver and Robert Petrie and his best friends included Mike Seaver, Peter Brady, Eric Forman, Theo Huxtable, Phil Diffy and Derek Venturi. It seemed like he finally had the life he wanted. If but he could stop himself from accidentally revealing intimate items from their private lives.

Among his best friends was Russell Coleman, a character slowly becoming aware of the world having changed around him. Like William, he too had suddenly found himself in a changed reality. All of a sudden, Coleman had found himself not working at the local Home Depot but for Cunningham Hardware and passing a fake ID in the local Red Boot Pub behind the courthouse. Acknowledging fifteen-year-old Tabitha Stephens and Kerry Hennessy, he turned past the school library watched by librarian Barbara Gordon and stopped William from leaving the school.

"I'm seeing Maddie at the Chill Grill." William tried to excuse himself past Russell.

"Will," Russell lifted his arm and leaned his heavy six-foot-two frame against Alex Keaton's locker. "When we visited that medium at the fair and she promised you three wishes, what did you wish for?"

"Well," Collins pulled on his leather jacket. "I wished I had powers like Wolverine of the _X-Men_. Look, my missing tooth came back and I lost twenty pounds. I'm hot to the girls now."

"Yeah…" Russell grinned thinking about his new look. "Well, that explains the claw marks on the cars of the football players…. Your second wish?"

"I replaced my idiot family with the Collins family from _Dark Shadows_." Collins confessed. In this pre-reality transformation, he'd been someone else entirely. "It is so cool living at Collinwood. Carolyn is so hot!! I love having Barnabas and Angelique as parents! I finally feel appreciated." He beamed at the notion of actually having a family that supported and loved him.

"Yeah," Russell mused. "And then what?"

"As long as I had gone that far…" William beamed covertly. "I brought all my favorite TV shows to life." He paused a bit confused. "And somehow a lot of shows I hated…."

"Yeah," Russell mused and stood up straight on his feet again. "That's the wish that did it. You see, you destroyed the town, eliminated and replaced thousands by bringing all these people to life in the real world and replaced the town with Mayberry as a result, even relocating us all to North Carolina." Coleman paused. "I was listening to Evie and Sabrina in gym class; they don't know they've been made real. They just think whatever lives they had before have been merged into a condensed universe." Russell watched the Professor from Gilligan's island talking about his life on _Gilligan's Island_ to Jaime Sommars; she was probably still _The Bionic Woman_, even living alongside her modern revamped version. "They don't know that this is the real world. Sabrina thinks their world collapsed into one town."

"Is that a problem?"

"Russell…." Kelly Bundy was standing nearby waiting for Russell. In the post-wish world, she was a mere TV character he had lusted after, but in this real world, she was real flesh and blood and very physical with every personality trait, nuance and idiosyncrasy programmed into her by the actress that once played her. She had changed from a loose and immoral TV high school bimbo to a real world flirt and extrovert.

"Actually, I've no problem with it." Russell answered William's question realizing that he and a lot of the old school's survivors from the old reality had a lot to benefit from these people made real. He took Kelly by the waist and started guiding her off to the gym, and William mugged a bit himself and started on his way out. Principal Gibb from _Eight Simple Rules_ wished him well, School Nurse Margaret Houlihan transposed out of the Korean War of _MASH_ recognized him and Lizzie McGuire beamed to him with a secret smile with a picture of Hilary Duff on her folder, little knowing they had once been one and the same. Sheriff Andy Taylor drove by the school little suspecting the truth behind his similarity to Atlanta lawyer Ben Matlock and to TV Star Andy Griffith. Before him, Collins said goodbye to Greg and Peter Brady in the 70s convertible parked by his car, a red 1987 Ferrari 308 GTS once owned by a local private investigator named Thomas Magnum.

It was a good life for once.

END


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